


Bottom of the River

by firefright



Series: Talon and the Hood [14]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Codependency, Court of Owls, Dick Grayson is a Talon, Gen, Heavy Angst, Identity Issues, Imprisonment, M/M, Memory Loss, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-02
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2018-06-05 19:55:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6720718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firefright/pseuds/firefright
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roy Harper came to Bludhaven for a simple reason; a deadly weapon about to be shipped into the United States by some Eastern European mobsters. It was supposed to be easy, get in, save the day, and then go home to his daughter. Except he wasn't expecting to find a ghost waiting there for him.</p><p>Dick Grayson is supposed to be dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey. So here's another part of this series, the part where things start to go wrong for our intrepid heroes. This may be a little slow updating due to other stuff I'm working on, but we will get there.

"The fuck..." Roy says, staring at the mess on the floor, with his teeth gritted together and his hands balled into fists.

He's spent weeks, no fuck that, _months_ tracking these Russian weapon smugglers across the country, following a trail of corruption all the way from Star City to Bludhaven; Gotham's uglier, skankier sister, and this is what he finds. A splatter of bloodstains and no living whackjobs to speak of.

The sheer unfairness of the situation grates into his skull, because what the hell is he even supposed to do with this? He needed these guys! Needed the intel they would have provided on some kind of super weapon that's due to be shipped in on a tanker sometime in the next week, but now there's no fucking chance. Whoever killed them cleared the place out, bodies and all.

Damn it, he is so far up shit creek that he can't even begin to vocalise his frustration.

"Okay, Harper. Relax." Roy finds it cathartic to talk to himself sometimes; a far better method for coping with his frustrations than beating his fists bloody on other people's faces or shooting himself up - not that he's done that for a couple years now.

(Once he had friends, a team to do the talking for him, but that was long ago.)

"You can think this through. Come on, come on..." He knows his only shot now is to track down the assholes who beat him here, then he might still be able get his answers. A shit chance, but better than nothing. There has to be something left behind that can lead him to them.

Roy drags his fingers back through his lank hair, trying not to think about how all he wants is to be at home with his daughter instead of tracking down a bomb big enough to take out a city on a Saturday night. It's his own fault, he signed up for this job when he could've handed it over to someone else, but no, he had to be the one to save the day. He had to try and make a difference, and now he's going to have to make even more excuses to Lian about why he still won't be coming home.

Just once, he'd like things to go easy. 

Combing the room for clues tales up half an hour of his time, but the only thing he finds of note is a set of bloody footprints that he thinks may belong to one of the killers; they leave by the window wearing heavy soled combat boots. There's also a few empty bullet casings on the floor. Roy pockets a couple, snaps a photo of the footprints on his phone, then calls in the police to come look over the crime scene while he follows more promising avenues of investigation.

It doesn't take many interrogations to learn about Redwing and Bluebird, Bludhaven's very own homegrown vigilantes. Nor the terror they've come to inspire in its criminal undergrowth since the last big bad boss in town was found dead in his home several months ago.

"They'll kill you, man." The gang member he corners in an alley after Roy introduces his face to the wall a few times. "The shit they did to Blockbuster... they ain't like the Bat or other hero's, you fuck up too bad and you're dead."

"What counts as 'too bad'?" Roy asks, grinding his cheek harder against the brickwork. They sound like that might be his guys.

The thug swallows, as the purple bandana declaring his allegiance slips down around his eyes. "I... I dunno, man. Shit like... er, hurting kids and women. Redwing fuckin' hate's that. He put six pimps in the hospital last month, two in the ground."

"So this Redwing's in charge?"

"That's what they say. He's the one does the talking, but Bluebird's the worst."

Bluebird, it's such an innocent name. Bluebird's are bright, happy little creature's, associated with good feelings. Roy never expected to find someone absolutely terrified at the mention of one.

"Yeah, why's that?"

"H-he's a shadow! A fuckin' ghost. Can see in the dark or some shit, you never hear him coming."

Roy rolls his eyes. He's heard idiots like this say similar things about Batman, none of them true."Is that a fact or just rumour?"

"It's just what they say." Thug-lyfe repeats, groaning as he loses a few more layers of skin to the wall. "Look, that's all I know. Can you let me go already?"

Rumour then.

"Sure. I'll let you go. Go hand yourself over to the cops."

"I ain't done shit!"

"Somehow I don't believe you." Roy yanks the dude away from the wall, then gives him a kick up the ass to send him stumbling down the street. "Don't worry, the walk'll give you plenty of time to think about what you're handing yourself in for. Oh, and hey?" He smirks threateningly, enough to make the guy pale. "Don't think I won't check to make sure you've followed through."

Good deed done for the night, Roy turns to head back to his motel. There's a 7-Eleven on the way, so he also grabs a six pack of beer and a box of donuts to take the hunger pangs he's feeling away. Fuck healthy eating, he's had a disappointing night.

And tomorrow he's going vigilante hunting.

 

*

 

A voice in his ear wakes Roy up before his alarm can.

"Yo..." He groans, hating whoever's on the line and life in general. "This better be good."

"I hear you're hunting birds."

Roy sits straight up from the bed, touching his fingers to the comm he forgot to remove before falling asleep only five hours before. "Oracle?"

"The one and only." The female voice says wryly. "So is it true, Arsenal?"

"What's it to you if I am?" Roy runs his hand through his hair, trying to push through the morning fuzz that's grown over his brain to think clearly. He doesn't bother asking how she knows where he is or what he's doing, sooner or later everyone stops asking Oracle questions like that. Her eyes and ears across the world are the most extensive he's ever encountered, which is why half the hero's out there have come to rely on her for information.

She's a very powerful lady, and that makes it even more curious that she's talking to him.

"I've been trying to get some concrete information on Redwing and Bluebird for some time. And I'll owe you a favour in return for sharing anything you discover about them with me."

That perks Roy up. He can definitely use some favours. "Okay, sure. But how come you're asking me? Don't you have others at your beck and call to do this for you?"

Oracle is quiet for thirty seconds, which is new in Roy's limited experience with her. Normally she's never without an immediate answer "This is... different to any other cases. I need someone with your unique perspective to work it, Harper."

The casual drop of his real name makes Roy wince, reminding him of just who he's dealing with here. "You going to let me in on exactly what that means?"

"Not yet."

"That's not exactly reassuring."

"It wasn't meant to be." The comm is silent again as Roy fishes about for his pants on the floor. When Oracle talks again it almost takes him by surprise. "I need you to trust me on this one, Arsenal. Please."

It's the please that catches him, stops him from retorting with something sharp about not appreciating being used by faceless entities to do their dirty work for them, even if there is something in it for him. "Fine." He sighs, "But you better have a good reason for this, Oracle."

The connection cuts and Roy finishes getting dressed. He still has enough time to wash in the narrow space that accounts for a bathroom, grab a proper meal and call home to check on Lian before it gets dark. Just hearing his daughters voice is enough to pull Roy out of his dark mood and fortify him against the night ahead.

And that's good, because tracking down Redwing and Bluebird turns out to be a total pain in the ass.

"Y'know," he says into the comm eventually, hoping that Oracle just so happens to be listening in after monotonous hours of him cracking heads and getting nowhere. "It might be easier to find them if you clue me in to anything big going down in Bludhaven tonight." Anything that might catch the attention of two would-be heroes with blood on their hands.

For a moment it seems like Roy's talking to thin air, but finally the comm crackles to life in his ear. Oracle's tone is short and clipped as she passes him the information. "The docks in half an hour. There's a big shipment coming in from Eastern Europe to one of the gangs here."

"A big shipment of what? The bomb?"

"Get down there yourself and find out." Oracle says curtly, before cutting the line. Roy guesses that's her code for saying that she doesn't know either.

He hails a taxi because why the fuck not, tipping the driver heavily once he gets out at the entrance to the harbour. It's summer, late July, and the temperature is sweltering as he jumps the chain link fence and makes his way through the tall shadows of piled up shipping containers. It doesn't take Roy long to find the right place, not with the sounds of gunshots and the meaty thud of fists hitting flesh to lead the way.

The first body he comes across is sat up against a shipping container. Roy stops to examine it grimly, noting the perfect bullet hole between the eyes of the thirty-something thug. Another, just ten feet away, is laid flat on his stomach, the blood from his slit throat forms a neatly congealed pool across the concrete. "Fuck me." Roy whispers.

It actually comes as a surprise when he finds someone living. A kid, maybe seventeen years-old. He's just been knocked out, albeit brutally judging by the rapidly forming bruise on his jaw, but he's still alive. Is it because of his age? Roy doesn't take the time to wonder, knowing he's working on borrowed time as it is.

He rolls the kid into the recovery position just in case, before pulling his bow off his back and setting an arrow to the string as he creeps forwards through the shadows. Something thunks against the other side of the shipping container he's shadowing and he hears a voice, young and male with a faint Gotham accent, say, "I think that's the last of them, Blue. Now let's take a look at this crate they were guarding."

_Not even close to the last, kid._

Roy doesn't hear an affirmative from anyone else as he moves closer, which lends credence to the idea that Bluebird is more of a silent partner to Redwing, A.K.A the chatty one. He waits until he hears the sound of wood being splintered open before revealing himself.

"Hold it!"

The two figures in front of him turn around as one and Roy, maybe acting on instinct from the warnings he's had previously about Bluebird being more dangerous, focuses his shot on the shorter man in blue. 

"Shit." The guy in red says, sounding far warier than he did a moment before. He's got a leather jacket on over the basic black armoured bodysuit they both wear, and those are some pretty heavy guns he has hanging on his hips. "Arsenal."

"What gave it away?" Roy quips, even though he's actually a little impressed at being identified so quickly by two minor leaguers. "You're Redwing, right? And that's Bluebird. I hear the two of you are what pass for heroes in this town."

Bluebird cocks his head at him, and there's something oddly familiar about the way he holds himself in Roy's vision, poised like he could take advantage of even the smallest opening in an instant. He doesn't carry any guns, just slim bladed knives that Roy can see.

"The hell are you doing here?" Redwing demands, dropping the bar he was using to open the crate and reaching for a glock instead. Roy clucks his tongue disapprovingly.

"Ah, ah. I wouldn't. I think we both know who has the drop on who right now." Roy smirks as Redwing growls and takes his hand back away from his gun. "As to why I'm here, I've got some questions for you. Starting with what the hell happened to those Russian mobsters across town last night."

"Russian mobsters?" Redwing raises an eyebrow, before sparing a look at his partner. "Do we know anything about any Russian mobsters, Blue?"

Bluebird doesn't answer, just keeps staring at Roy with a singular focus that's starting to get unnerving.

"Nah." The bigger man fills in for him, "Not a thing."

Roy snorts, "Look, kid." Redwing looks even unhappier somehow at this address, but it's not like Roy could give a fuck. "You want to be a hero? Give me some answers. We're both on the same side here."

"Funny thing for the guy holding a bow and arrow on us to say."

"Well there are a bunch of dead bodies around, just saying. And you two don't exactly have the friendliest rep."

"That's stereotyping, dude."

Under other circumstances Roy might have found this guy funny, but right now he's just kind of pissed. "Look, those Russians? They're responsible for a bomb that's about to be shipped into the country. A very big, very dangerous bomb. So when I track them down and find nothing but bloodstains on the floor? Yeah, I'm pissed off."

Redwing shifts, but not to attack. He holds up his hands as he angles his body to place himself between Bluebird and Roy, and oh that's cute, he's protective over his partner. "Not our problem."

"Don't be stupid, kid. If that bomb goes off here or anywhere else on the eastern seaboard then it's everyone's problem."

"Good point, thanks for the heads up. We'll look into that."

"It's not a mission hand off, you arrogant little -"

A smoke bomb goes off right at that moment, obscuring both of them, and Roy swears as he realises that's the real reason why Redwing had moved himself in front of Bluebird. He let's loose his arrow, with a non-lethal shock absorbing tip, into the smoke, but doesn't hear it collide with anything until it hits the crane across the square. Fuck, who do these guys think they are. Batman?

Roy takes off running, holding his breath as he dives into the cloud of smoke.

On the other side of the cloud he can't immediately see them, but then he thinks he glimpses a shadow moving to his left and heads in that direction. "Any chance of you spotting me?" He pants into his earpiece, but there's no response from Oracle.

Fine, he's on his own then, just like normal.

Running between the stacks, Roy keeps his eyes and ears peeled, as well as his back covered as much as possible. He's well aware that he's probably one against two here, that is if the pair are choosing to fight him rather than just attempting to get the hell out of dodge, and for all that they're relatively new to the biz he has no idea what their skill levels are. He could be dealing with two young punks who've just about figured out how to throw a punch (though probably not Bluebird, he thinks with an odd shiver), or a couple of trained martial arts masters.

Roy takes out a new arrow and fixes it to the string. It's a special one since he's not out to do anything but incapacitate and talk. He doesn't want to hurt these two, not if he can help it, but if they force his hand then he's not afraid to get mean if it means getting his answers.

"Look," he says, maybe stupidly as he gives away his location but deciding that the risk'll be worth it. "I get it! You're territorial, lots of heroes are! But I want to save the people here as much as you do. It'll make a whole lot more sense if the two of you work with me on this."

Keep talking, get their guard down. Make them think you're a bumbling buffoon and maybe they'll take the time to answer back. Sure enough, Redwing doesn't disappoint, and boy does he need some serious attitude adjustment. He's being a little ridiculously aggressive to someone he just met.

"We don't need your help," His voice echoes back at Roy through the maze of shipping containers, "Leave before I put a bullet in you, Arsenal!"

Roy tries to pinpoint him by sound alone, but the metal crates stacked up around them bounce the sound back and forth, making it virtually impossible. His voice seems to be coming from all directions.

"Come on, kid, you're being ridiculous."

"I ain't a kid, asshole!"

There's the bang of a gunshot, and Roy ducks instinctively, swearing as metal sparks off metal two feet to the left of him, making his ears ring. Okay, that does it. Maybe Redwing wasn't aiming to kill him, but still.

No more Mr. Nice Guy.

Roy pulls back the string, takes a calming breath, then whips up his bow and shoots the arrow into the open sky. This one doesn't need a precise target, not with the kind of area effect it has. He quickly shuts his eyes and covers his ears, just in time as the arrow hits thirty feet in the air and explodes into a glorious show of blinding white light and noise that penetrates even through his eyelids.

There's one cut-off yell to his left. Then, surprisingly close to him, an outright scream. Something thuds downwards, and any sense of triumph Roy may have had at getting one over the amateurs quickly turns to concern, because a flashbang arrow usually doesn't make someone sound like _that_.

He squeezes open his eyes, blinks a few spots out of them, then looks cautiously in the direction where he can hear whimpering. 

Bluebird, it's Bluebird. Roy hadn't even realised how close he was, and that's scary in itself; but now he just feels bad because the slender vigilante is obviously in some serious pain. Knowing the guy's partner got hit too, Roy moves cautiously closer, pulling out a pair of handcuffs as he does. Blue probably won't be able to hear clearly, if at all, thanks to the 'bang' part of the flashbang, but he still tries to talk to him. "Hey, hey easy. Bluebird, right? Just stay still, it'll wear off soon."

"Stay away from me!" Hisses Blue, and there's a knife in his hand as he strikes out blindly, but Roy's not paying attention to that anymore. 

He knows that voice.

"What..."

The handcuffs fall from his hand, clattering against the concrete. Roy's paralysed, he can't move as he watches Bluebird push himself backwards across the ground until his back meets a shipping container. The slender vigilante's hand shakes as he holds the dagger out in front of him to ward off any perceived attack, while he frantically rubs the other over the mask covering his eyes. 

With sudden suicidal urgency, Roy moves closer.

"Stay away. Stay away!"

Memories he'd thought he'd buried spark in his brain. Of a team, a best friend, a boy whose smile could light up any room and whose presence could command even the unruliest of teen heroes. But that boy had died years ago, so why did Roy hear his voice now in the killer before him? It's impossible, yet he feels like he's choking as he places his bow on the ground and holds up his hands at either side of his head.

His own eyes, sharp archers eyes that never miss their target, now try to analyse every inch of skin that he can see. He's too pale, Roy's brain tries to reason off the bat, way too pale. He'd never... Dick would never... But the shape of the face is right, as is the dark shade of his hair, though it's longer than his friend had ever worn it.

"Who are you?" He chokes out desperately, and Bluebird freezes, evidently having heard him this time. "Who the fuck are you?"

"No one." he rasps.

"Bullshit!" Roy's hands squeeze into fists, though he keeps them up by his head. "I know your voice."

He has to be a lonely fool to be this desperate. He thought he'd left the worst of the delusions behind him when he'd detoxed. But this is reality, and Roy can't let this stone sit unturned if there's any chance at all. 

Blue shakes his head, rubbing at his eyes again. He's somehow coiled in even tighter to the wall of the shipping container. "You're wrong. Leave me alone."

"Please." Roy says on the edge of begging, "Dick -"

That's all he manages to say before a snarl of rage to his right interrupts him, then a heavy weight crashes into Roy and knocks him flying. "Get the fuck away from him!" 

All thoughts of negotiation fly out of Roy's head, replaced by a sudden hot anger that has him coming up swinging. His first punch catches Redwing in the cheek, making satisfying contact even as the guy turns his head to minimise the impact of the blow before grabbing Roy's arm by the wrist and trying to twist it. He hisses, launches his knee up into Red's ribs and throws his body weight upwards to get on top.

"Tell me he's not who I think he is!" He yells, right before Red slices upwards at him with a fucking kris dagger that he apparently pulled out of his boot.

Roy pitches himself backwards to avoid getting his face fucked up, rolling across the hard ground and onto his feet again as Red growls, "Don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't lie to me!" Roy draws upon every inch of command he's ever had. "I know when people are lying!"

"Apparently you fucking don't, because I ain't got a clue what you're saying!" Red draws out a gun before Roy can react to stop him. There's a smirk on his face, one that's more than a little unhinged. "But I do know that if you don't get the fuck out of my town right now that, hero or not, I will put a bullet through your skull. Clear?"

"He was my best friend." He's shaking. Desperation talks over every rational parts of Roy's brain, the one's trying to tell him to back the fuck off right now, because this guy isn't kidding. "My best friend."

"I don't give a shit. Get out. Go home." The gun cocks.

The anger surges once more. "Did you do this to him?"

Redwing's face twists, first with horror, rage and then disgust,each emotion passing over it in quick succession. "If you want to live, Harper," He whispers in a low, deadly tone, as Roy feels a terrified jolt at the use of his real name from this guys lips, "You'll never imply anything like that to me ever again."

"How the fuck do you know my name?"

"I know a lot of things." Redwing kneels down next to Bluebird, hand brushing tenderly over his pale cheek, "More than you. Now, go away."

"Dick -"

Bluebird can't see him, he's sure, but he turns his head away from Roy all the same and into Red's touch, hand snaking around his partners wrist. 

"Leave." Is all he whispers, and that hurts. That hurts a hell of a lot.

Roy staggers backwards, feeling like he's been struck right in the heart. It's all he can do to say, "This isn't over." before leaving the pair alone, making his way back through the shipping containers and out of the yard with the stilted gait of something straight out of a Romero movie.

He only realises he left his bow behind once it's too late to go back. Too bad he doesn't give a fuck.

His hand shakes as he reaches up to his ear, fumbling to activate the comm. "Why..." Roy says quietly, even as he's screaming on the inside. He's on the edge of a panic attack. Drowning in a sea of impossibility. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I had to be sure." Oracle says softly on her end. "It's him?"

"Or a damn good impressionist." Roy sinks down onto the ground, fighting back the urge to vomit. "He didn't recognise me."

Silence pervades, then in a tone like an apology Oracle gives him one final decree. "I'm sending your phone coordinates, follow them. There's a lot we need to talk about, and we don't have much time."

She hangs up before Roy can say yes, or tell her to go fuck herself. Honestly he's torn between the two. At the base of it he knows he'll do as she says, because her way lie answers, and Roy can't go home until he knows them all.

If Bluebird is Dick... if there's even the slightest chance that it's him... 

There's no way in hell that Roy will ever lose him again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey friends, welcome to another chapter of this mess, also known as 'everyone makes ill-advised choices out of good intentions'.
> 
> Enjoy!

Jason doesn't bother taking Blue back to their apartment, it's too far given the circumstances, and they have an emergency safehouse that's located conveniently closer. He spares his partner worried glances the whole way there, in-between whispered instructions on where they're going and when to watch his step. The fact that even now, twenty minutes after the fact, Blue is still having trouble seeing scares him.

"Reactive lenses, my ass." Jason mutters as he gets him sat down on the stained blue couch that occupies the centre of the floor. "Wait here a minute, Blue."

When they're safe again he's going to track down the guy who manufactured the lenses and gut him, just to make a point. Maybe even blind him first just to see how he likes it. 

He's being irrational, but who can blame him after what happened tonight? Jason swallows hard as he moves to activate the security cameras and lock down the building. As far as people who can hurt them goes they're up shit creek without a paddle now. 

_Roy Harper_. Why him, why now? Things were _good_ , Bludhaven was theirs. They had a home, a mission, and now...

Now they're going to have to start over all over again.

Jason returns to where he left Blue, kneeling down in front of him and touching his knee. "Hey, beautiful, you seeing me yet?"

"A blurry you." Clawed fingertips grace his face, cupping his cheek. Jason leans into the touch as he pulls out the solvent that will loosen the glue holding the masks to their faces and offers it up to Blue. "Who was he?"

One hundred percent the question Jason doesn't want to deal with right now. He distracts himself by kissing Dick's gloved palm, and oh, it's so much harder not to think of him as 'Dick' in the light of what just happened. "No one important."

"Jason." The reproach in Blue's voice has him flinching and closing his eyes. "He knew me."

"He knew the old you. Dick Grayson." Jason corrects with a heavy sigh. He sinks lower down onto his knees, watching as Blue peels off his mask and then hands the solvent back to him. His gold-ringed eyes seem to be focusing, which is more than what they were doing twenty minutes ago. Jason purposefully left off the lights in the safehouse out of consideration for that fact. "His name is Roy Harper, but he also goes by Arsenal. A few years ago he called himself Speedy, when he was a member of a superhero team called the Teen Titan's. With Robin."

"The first Robin."

Jason nods after taking off his own domino. "Yeah."

Blue's fingers slip up into his hair, raking over his scalp before he draws Jason up beside him. "Jason -"

"We need to go." Jason says, "He's going to come back. Probably not alone this time. There are others -"

"You want us to leave?" Blue says incredulously. "Leave Bludhaven?"

"We don't exactly have a choice."

It galls him to say it, but Jason knows he's right. Harper will come back, and when he does he won't come alone. Either he'll call up some other members of Dick's old team, or worse, he'll call _Bruce_. Then they really will be fucked. "Trust me, Blue. I'm not happy about it either."

"Jason." Blue says slowly, as if talking to a child. "This is our home."

"So was Gotham. But we left that behind, we can -"

Jason yelps as Blue's hand suddenly tightens in his hair. " _No_. We're not leaving, little bird."

"But -" Jason tries to argue, only to be cut off again.

"This is our home, we've fought for it. Bled for it, _killed_ for it." Blue says hotly, eyes growing sharper by the minute as his regenerative abilities work their magic. "And you want to let them drive us out like dogs with their tails between their legs."

"I want to protect you!" This time he really does snap back, snatching at the hand in his hair and glaring at his partner. "If they catch us, they'll try to destroy you and bring _him_ back."

"If you were really afraid of that then you should have killed him." Jason yelps as his head is bent back, neck exposed as Blue leans over him. He's suddenly reminded of how being with an ex-Talon can be like playing with fire, that, no matter how domestic Blue may have seemed this past year, he's still a feral creature at heart. A predator.

Summoning his resolve, Jason grits his teeth and glares back at him. This relationship doesn't work if he's afraid of Blue. "We don't kill good guys."

"We kill anyone who threatens us." Blue says hotly. "The way we did Blockbuster. The way I did the Joker for you."

Jason's eyes widen, shocked beyond measure to hear him play that card. He yanks himself free of the hold, losing a few hairs in the process as he rebounds onto his feet with his heart pounding in his chest. "Fuck you, it's not the same and you know it. They were both villainous assholes who only wanted to hurt people. Roy Harper's a hero, and he has friends, _family_. Killing him would bring us just as much trouble as letting him go."

"I'm not running."

"For fucks sake!" Jason explodes. "How are you not getting this?! Do you want to be dragged in by Batman and subjected to some telepath or magician's control while they try and pry open your head to bring Grayson back?! Because let me tell you, Blue, that's what'll happen!"

He starts pacing across the room, moving towards the computer screens he has set up there, but barely makes it five feet before a weight impacts with his back and slams him up against the wall.

He hisses at the impact. "So, guess your eyesight's better."

Blue growls, "Don't walk away from me."

"I'm not - Jesus Christ, I just wanted to check the cameras!" 

Jason's pulled back and turned around, both arms grasped by Blue before he's pinned to the wall again. This time with Blue right in his face. "The cameras are fine, Jason." His partner growls hotly, "We're not done talking yet."

Jason twitches, hands curling into fists, though he doesn't try to break free of the hold yet. "I already told you everything I have to say, Blue. If you don't want to listen that's your problem."

"I listened, I just don't agree." Blue's leg pushes between his thighs as he plasters himself up against Jason. In the dark his eyes seem to glow preternaturally, alive and intelligent and bright in ways that make Jason's heart ache, because he knows no one else will ever see what he sees when he looks at Blue. They'll see a parasite that needs to be expunged, a killer inhabiting the shell of a good man, not someone worth keeping alive. "Jason."

"What?" He says hoarsely, refusing to break their eye contact.

"I don't want to leave."

"Neither do I."

Blue shifts against him, "Then why -"

"If we stay, we're going to have to fight." Jason says, "There's no two ways about it, Blue. Arsenal will come back, and when he does he won't be alone. A lot of people out there care about the man you used to be."

Those gold ringed eyes flicker, looking down, then back up. "But only you care about me."

"Yeah, Blue." he whispers, "That's why we need to go. I don't... I can't lose you."

"You won't lose me." Blue says quietly, "You're mine, Jason. You belong to me, and I won't leave you."

"Not willingly." Jason acknowledges, "But they... they'll think they're doing the right thing. They'll think by trying to dig those memories back out of your head they'll be saving you, and me..." He laughs bitterly. "I'll just be the fuck up selfishly keeping you for my own ends. I don't have the excuse of amnesia that they'll give you. If I get caught they'll throw me straight into Blackgate."

Or if he's really unlucky: Arkham. Jason doesn't think he's insane, at least not anymore, the way he was when he first came out of the Pit, but others might disagree.

Blue's fingers tighten around his wrists at the mere mention of the place. "He's not coming back. He can't."

Jason laughs bitterly, "After this long you think they'd realise that, huh?" It's been eight years since Dick Grayson was lost to the Court of Owls, and still all Blue had of that life were mere flashes of memories, missing context and reason. Whatever they'd done to him to erase his past life, it had been thorough, but no one else seemed to understand that. They mourned the man they'd lost, but only Jason loved the person he was now.

"We can't run forever, Jason."

"Sure we can. It's a big world out there."

"I don't _want_ to run forever." Blue corrects himself, clawed fingertips tracing over his jacket sleeves, across where the veins run in Jason's arms. "I don't want to go back to skulking in the shadows. I like it here. I like what we do now."

"Then what do we do?" Jason asks tiredly. "Wait for them to come get us? Bonnie and Clyde that shit?"

His hands twitch as Blue lets go of his wrists, sliding his hands up his arms to Jason's shoulders. He can tell the reference flies over his head, but that doesn't matter as Blue cups his face and kisses him. He returns it, if only out of desperation. "Blue..."

"We'll figure something out." Blue promises him.

"That's not exactly reassuring."

Blue snorts, "It's no worse than any of your plans, little bird."

"My plans are great. _You_ just never stick to them." Jason complains, rolling his eyes, then sighing as Blue tucks his face down in against his neck. As aggressive as Blue's been acting, he knows him well enough by now to see that underneath it his partner has been shaken by the encounter too. His hand moves to stroke up and down the length of Blue's spine, while the other curves around his waist. "... you really want to risk it?"

_Do you really want to risk us?_

"I'm not giving up on our home, little bird, or you."

Jason thinks of their apartment across the city, filled with all the possessions they've accumulated over the past year; his books, their clothes, Blue's cheesy action movies; the fairy lights strung up on the walls that had never come back down since he installed them at Christmas. Even the words 'our home' from his partner's lips are enough to make him hesitate. It means so much to him, Blue, who before could only remember the cold chambers of the Court and whatever holes in the wall he occupied in Gotham after he escaped his former masters.

He's going to regret this so much. They both are.

"Okay." Jason surrenders, "Okay. Then we'll fight. We'll make 'em see reason, whatever it takes."

His reward is a possessive press of lips against his neck, complete with teeth scraping over his jugular, and Jason sighs, sagging further back against the wall. He should have known better than to argue, when it comes down to it he'll do most anything to make Blue happy; even when he knows there's a good chance it's doomed to end in failure.

"Come on," Jason swallows after a while, when it becomes clear the conversation is done for now. "Let's go home."

 

*

 

"YOU SON OF A BITCH!" Roy roars as his fist slams into Batman's exposed chin, knuckles ringing off the hard bone of his jaw.

Dick Grayson, his friend, the boy he and so many others had mourned for almost a decade, was still breathing. Had never stopped if Roy is understanding things right. Instead he'd been taken by some kind of cult called the Court of Owls, whose members consisted of the upper classes of Gotham. They'd tortured him, broken him, warped him into an _assassin_ ; the very antithesis of the friend Roy remembered. Dick could never have killed anyone, and worst of all...

"You knew!" He hisses at the dark cloaked figure as he takes a step backwards, "You knew the whole damn time!"

"Arsenal -"

"I don't want to hear it! Not from you, you sanctimonious asshole." Roy snarls, shaking his hand. Because damn that hurt. "How the fuck could you lie to us?!"

"I didn't lie." Bruce growls, "I believed he was dead. After we cleared out the Court of Owls he vanished completely. For years, I thought -"

"Don't you use that Obi-Wan Kenobi, dead-from-a-certain-point-of-view, bullcrap on me!" Roy barely holds himself back from punching him again. He strongly suspects he only got that first blow in for free. "You knew there was a chance he was still out there, but you kept it to yourself, because you're fucking Batman and you don't trust anyone, right?! You have to do everything yourself! You stuck up, goth piece of -"

"Harper!" A sharp female voice cuts into his tirade, "That's enough. I know how you feel," Oracle casts Bruce a resentful look of her own as she rolls into view, back from checking something on one of the many computers lining the wall. "But arguing now isn't going to get us anywhere."

She'd turned out to be far different from anything Roy imagined when he followed the coordinates she'd given him to a warehouse on the edge of town. A pretty redheaded woman in a wheelchair, with a pair of glasses perpetually in danger of falling off the end of her nose. Barbara isn't exactly what one would expect from the worlds greatest hacker, but her gaze is pure steel, and Roy knew from the moment he met her that she means business.

They'd actually been getting on pretty well until tall, dark and brooding showed up.

"Why is he here?" Batman demands impatiently, rubbing his jaw where Roy struck him. Bastard doesn't even have the decency to bleed. "You didn't clear this with me."

"He was in the area, Bruce. He was going to track them down for unrelated reasons. I saw an opportunity and I took it. Roy knew Dick as well as we did, and because of him we have positive confirmation of Bluebird's identity, plus someone else who might be able to get through to Dick when we find him." Barbara's eyes narrow, "You came to me for my help, but I can only guide you, I can't back you up in the field. Against the two of them you know even you would struggle alone."

Batman sucks in a sharp breath, his gauntleted fists clenching tight at his sides at what is evidently an old talking point between the two.

"You're not leaving me out of this now." Roy agrees, staring Batman down. "I don't give a fuck how you feel. That's my best friend out there, so I'm helping. You try and shut me out and I'll go after him myself anyway."

The threat is enough to make Bruce relent. He spits out the word "Fine." after a long measured glare at Roy like he's doing them a damn favour. "But now they'll be on full alert. We'll have to move immediately to avoid losing them."

"I understand that, Bruce, and I've already adjusted our strategy to accommodate it."

It's with sheer effort that Roy doesn't spit back in Batman's face, choosing to focus on Oracle instead as he asks his next question. At least she seems to have her head on straight, and there's still more he needs to know and understand before they go any further forwards. "The other guy, Redwing..."

"Jason Todd." She corrects him. 

"Jason Todd. He was the second one," He stares at Batman, who remains silent. "The one the Joker got. How the hell did... I mean, Dick just _disappeared_ ; we obviously never found a body. But that kid... everyone knows he was dead for real."

"We don't know how Jason came back from the dead, only that he reappeared last year in Gotham, operating as a crime lord under the name of the Red Hood. He took control of the city's drug trade before goading Batman into a confrontation between him and the Joker; that's when Dick - Talon, reappeared. It was the first time anyone had seen him in years." Barbara folds her hands tightly together in her lap. "He's the one who killed the Joker."

Dear God... Roy's thoughts threaten to tip into a very bad place, before he forces himself to push past such blatant admission of Dick committing murder. "With the second Robin, that's a little convenient. What's their connection?"

"Unknown." Batman admits, jaw clenching as if the admission pains him.

It doesn't satisfy Roy to hear, but looking between Barbara and Bruce, he can see it's the truth - as far as they know anyway. "Well whatever it is, they're close. There was something pretty damn intimate about the way they acted around each other," he says bitterly, remembering the way Dick had leaned into the guy's hand, at the same time as telling Roy to take a hike. "Redwing - Todd, he got real pissed off when my flashbang arrow blinded Dick. Freaked out when I accused him of being the one behind what those Court fuckers did to him."

"He would." Batman says, voice softening curiously as he speaks. "Jason was there when I destroyed the Court. He knows exactly what the Talon making process involved."

Barbara breathes in sharply, hands moving to grip the arms of her wheelchair. The plastic creaks beneath the padding as her knuckles turn white. "But how far back does the relationship go? Did they meet before Jason died or after."

"Before. He... Jason implied as much when we last saw each other."

"Well, shit, little fucker lied to you when he was Robin, huh? Never knew anyone could get one over the great Batman, let alone a kid." Roy can't resist mocking, his tone bitter and angry as he taps his foot impatiently against the ground. "Though I guess it doesn't make much of a difference now; we're bringing Dick back, end of story. So clue me into the plan here. I assume there is a plan. And oh yeah, let's not forget about that bomb I was tracking. That's still kind of a big deal."

Now more than ever Roy wishes he could forget about it, but he can't. Hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake if that thing goes off or falls into the wrong hands; he couldn't live with himself if he lets that happen, not even if it means getting Dick back.

Knowing the kind of guy Dick was, he wouldn't want Roy doing that either.

"Don't worry, I have other people on that now." Barbara assures him. "Our focus needs to be on bringing in Dick, and Jason."

Bats are something else, Roy thinks, though he's not entirely sure that Barbara would call herself one. It's maybe the first time in his life that he's been glad to have a mission taken out of his hands without asking.

"Yeah, okay. I'll trust you on that. So?"

Barbara looks at Bruce, and there's something between them despite her obvious anger at him, some connection that lets them communicate without a word said out loud. It's the same way Roy remembers Batman and Robin always being able to talk to each other. Not with telepathy, but simply the deep understanding that came from having worked alongside someone so intimately for so long. 

Roy's eyes flicker back and forth between them, and it's about the time his foot is starting to tap impatiently again that Barbara finally nods and beckons him forwards towards the nearest computer as Bruce stands aside to make room for him.

"All right, Arsenal. Here's what you need to know..."

 

*

 

The next night Roy is back out on the streets of Bludhaven, playing bait and trying his damnedest to make it look like it's all his own idea that he's sticking around (which it is, even with the Bat-shaped intervention) rather than leaving like Redwing warned him to.

He's tired, both from a complete lack of sleep the night before as he tormented himself with his new knowledge over Dick's fate, and the oppressive heat of the summer air pushing down at him. Bludhaven is a town that breathes smog instead of oxygen, and it weighs on Roy almost as much as the tranquilliser gun sitting in the holster at his thigh does.

If things don't go according to plan tonight that's his back up, his failsafe. And while at first Roy had balked at the dosage in the needle when Batman handed it over to him - enough to kill a normal human man - he'd been assured that it won't do the same to what Dick is now.

His crash course in Talon physiology and behaviour in the early hours of the morning had taught Roy that the Court of Owls servants were given more than just extra sensitive eyesight (bordering on true night vision) as a perk of the job, they also had highly-accelerated regenerative abilities too, presumably with a heightened metabolism to feed it. If Dick does show tonight it's going to take every drop of the anaesthetic Roy has to bring him down for even a short-period of time without having to seriously injure him, and even then Bruce had emphasised caution; he could only guess at how quickly Dick's body would break down the drug, since there were no other Talon's, living or undead, left to trial it on first.

Just the thought of shooting Dick makes Roy want to scream internally, but he has to remember that Dick doesn't know himself or what he's doing. As much as Roy hopes that words will be enough to reach Dick if he comes at him with an intent to kill they just can't take that chance. _He_ can't take that chance, not when he has his little girl waiting for him at home.

 _Forgive me, Lian._ Roy thinks for what feels like the fiftieth time since he first found out Bluebird's real identity, ravaged by further guilt for the new delay, _I'll be home as soon as I can._

If it means Lian will finally to get to know Dick as more than just a memory and a photograph, it'll be worth it.

"Just stay cool, Arsenal. I've got you in my sights." Oracle murmurs into his ear, picking up on his jitteriness as she tracks him through the city's security cameras. Roy doesn't dare reply back to her, not when he's certain he's already being watched.

Yeah cool, he can stay cool. He's wandering through Bludhaven's worst districts, waiting to be attacked by a pair of vigilantes he really pissed off last night, one of whom is his best friend who's supposedly been dead for years but was in actual fact turned into a remorseless killer with amnesia. It's the perfect recipe for him to stay calm and collected.

 _Cool_ is definitely what he is.

"I thought I told you to get out of town."

Redwing really is a Bat-kid; it's obvious now that Roy has that information to hand. He's got the whole popping-out-of-nowhere thing down pat. Slowly, Roy raises his hands up next to his head before turning around to face him.

"You did, but I wanted to talk to you first."

Redwing, _Todd's_ , voice is flat and angry as he steps out of the shadows and cocks his gun at Roy's head. It's a .38, the same gun as last night, which is a vicious choice of calibre. "We don't have anything to talk about, Arsenal."

"Yeah, see, that's where you're wrong." There's no sign of Bluebird, but that's okay, that's all right. Bruce had theorised that if either of them took the bait to confront Roy again tonight it would be Redwing; Robin II apparently had that kind of personality. They can deal with him the way the plan specified, and then get to Dick later (that is if he's not hanging around in shadows somewhere nearby waiting to attack, out of sight but not out of mind).

Dick killed the Joker for this kid, there's obviously _something_ big there. Some attachment that will surely bring him in on Todd's side the moment this gets ugly if he's nearby. If that does happen Roy will have to hope that Batman will have his back the way he promised he would.

"There's plenty of things I need to know from you before I'll be ready to leave." Roy continues, staring Redwing down.

Todd clenches his jaw, "And here I thought you were supposed to be some kind of genius. Don't think just because you're a hero I won't hurt you if I have to."

"You haven't shot me yet."

"That can change."

"Where is he?"

Roy's been in this game too long to be intimidated by some punk kid with a gun, even if that kid was trained by Batman.

"He's not who you think he is, so turn around and walk away, Arsenal. Final warning."

He almost feels bad, hearing the tinge of desperation in the kid's voice, but Roy's anger trumps it. He has no idea if Todd's intentions are good or not, but it all boils down to the fact that he kept Dick away from them the same as Bruce did; he hid him, and maybe lied to Batman for years before about his relationship with the first boy wonder when he was Robin. He's also a killer, a criminal who ran a drug empire for months in Gotham, and Roy has no interest in letting him run the show now.

All he has to do is piss Redwing off enough to get him good and close, _without_ giving away that he knows who he is behind that mask or that he's no longer working alone.

"Is that what you told him?"

Todd's caught off guard by the question, "What?"

"I don't know what happened to Dick, how you found him or who you are," Roy lies, "But did you even try to help him remember who he was? Or did you decide that having a skilled, highly-trained fighter on your side with amnesia was easier?"

Now he's silent. It's a very deadly kind of silence.

"Not very heroic when you put it like that, is it? But then again you don't seem like a very heroic kind of guy, using someone vulnerable as a tool to make yourself look good." Roy cocks his head, keeps his mouth running. Pushing the button that had made Redwing snap before. "You obviously know who he is, and anyone with a shred of decency in them would have done the right thing and taken him home, or alerted the JLA to his location. Not you though, huh? You saw an opportunity and you took it, which makes you a scumbag, and I have real low opinions on scumbags."

Now Todd slides his gun back into its holster. It's only a small relief that he's not intending to use his firearm now. "Is that right?" he asks Roy softly.

"Sure is. So you finally going to do the decent thing, big guy? Or am I going to have to come over there and make you?"

Roy hears it when Todd cracks his knuckles beneath his gloves, seconds before a fist impacts with his jaw. The distance that had been between them is apparently nothing to a pissed off ex-Robin with something to prove.

Knowing how to take a hit and make it look good is a valuable skill, so Roy stumbles back a couple of paces, minimising the impact of the blow before trying to retaliate. Todd's next swing goes for his belly and he knocks it aside, before punching back out at the kid's head. They're both about the same height, and Todd has some muscle on Roy, but Roy has the greater experience. It'd be a damn fair fight between them if he wanted to put in the effort, but Roy already knows how this is going to end. This isn't a battle he needs to win.

Ducking and diving, he makes his loss look good, putting up just enough of a fight to stop the kid from catching on. He's obviously confident in his abilities, and it's no joke to Roy when he finally gets flattened against the pavement with a curved knife at his throat and blood dribbling down his face from his nose.

"Let me make one thing perfectly clear, Arsenal," Redwing growls, straddling his waist and leaning down closer to glare at Roy through the white lenses of his domino mask. "You don't know a damn thing about me and Blue, which is why I'm going to give you a handy piece of information to chew on while you go back to whatever hovel you call home. He knows who he used to be, and he still _chose_ this place, he chose _me_. So whatever fantasies you have of being able to bring your friend back, you better get them out of your head right now, because they ain't happening. Got it?"

"Go fuck yourself." Roy wheezes, "Dick wouldn't -"

"He wouldn't, Blue would. Like it or not, your friend's gone, idiot. The sooner you accept that the happier you'll be." The knife cuts the surface layers of his skin, deep enough that beads of blood well up around it. It's easy enough for Roy to wriggle the tiny aerosol can out of his belt and spray its contents on the back of Redwing's pants while he talks.

Roy shakes his head. "I don't believe you. And I'm not leaving until I see him for myself."

"Yeah, you are."

He just manages to hide the can again before Red takes the knife away from his throat, reverses his hold on it, then brings the hilt down hard against Roy's temple, knocking him out instantly.

 

*

 

When Roy comes to again, Batman is kneeling over him, and he can see stars overhead.

"Um, hey." He mumbles over the pounding in his brain, "Wha' happened?"

"You were knocked out."

"I figured that, I mean what happened after?" Roy brushes off the concerned hand from his face, stifling a groan as he pushes himself to sit up before gingerly touching the livid bruise now spreading down the side of his face where Todd struck him. "... and... where am I?"

"Bludhaven's western outskirts." Bruce stands, the deep folds of his cloak falling forwards over his arms. "Red Hood - Redwing, he dragged you to the train yard while you were unconscious and put you on a freight train bound for Star City. I was able to pull you back off before it got too far out of the city."

Roy stares at Bruce for a moment, then turns his attention to his surroundings. That explains the stars, you'd never be able to see those from inside Bludhaven's polluted limits, and there's the train line to his left, with a bare dirt road running down alongside it. Five feet to the right of him the great black shape of the Batmobile sits with its engine idling. "Huh. That was... nice of him?"

"Hm." Bruce's expression doesn't change from its usual dour setting.

"So," Roy groans as he gets back up onto his feet. Getting knocked unconscious definitely hadn't been part of the plan. "Did it work?"

For a moment he's expecting to hear bad news, that the aerosol failed, that the nanites didn't bond to Redwing's costume or that the tracking signal is too weak to be traceable, but then Bruce lifts his head and nods in confirmation. "Contact was confirmed thirty seconds after you applied the micro-device, Oracle's tracing him now. We'll know the location of his and Dick's base of operations soon enough."

"And you're certain he won't pick up on it?"

"I invented the nano-tracer six months ago. There's no way Jason can know about it. He'll only check for normal tracking devices."

"Good, that's good. Then we can..." Roy wobbles, but waves Bruce off when he moves to step closer. Call him petty, but he's still angry enough at the man for his years of silence over the truth of Dick's fate to refuse his help even when he can barely stand up straight. "Then we fetch Dick home, right?"

"Yes." Bruce nods, looking into the dark shadows of the trees lining the road rather than at Roy. "We fetch both of them home."

Call him callous, but Roy really doesn't give much of a shit about Todd as he lets out a sigh of relief before heading for the car. He doesn't know that kid, not the way Bruce and Barbara do, he only cares about Dick. "Then c'mon, I need to get my head checked and take some painkillers before we move onto that." 

He also needs to make a phone call home, because nothing will make him feel better through what's to come than the sound of his daughter's voice.

Bruce follows him, unlocking the car doors so Roy can climb in on the passenger side. They start the drive back to Oracle's base in stolid silence, each focused on their own thoughts of the two young men they intend to bring back to reason.

 _He knows who he used to be, and he still chose this place, he chose me_.

Roy shakes his head, trying to dislodge the memory of Todd's words as he would a fly in his ear. There's no way that can be true. No way at all. If Dick remembered who he was he would have come home, end of story.

That's why they have to make him remember, no matter what it takes.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi friends! Umm...
> 
> I'm sorry?

Bruce watches the building from the safety of the shadows across the street, hidden out of the range of even Dick’s supernaturally gifted eyesight. Barbara is conducting her own observations through both the camera in his cowl and those he’s set up in the surrounding area for her, while Harper has been left to go over the final details of their plan in the warehouse that’s acting as their homebase in Bludhaven.

So far, so good. There’s been no movement from their targets in the apartment Barbara had identified as belonging to Dick and Jason, registered under the deceptively simple fake name of Todd Peters. Simple enough to be glanced over by anyone who didn’t know what they were looking for.

They’d hidden from him for months by sitting in plain sight. Bruce would have almost been proud of them for the deception were the circumstances not so dire.

Targets... His mind goes back to that word. It’s one that sits ill with him when applied to the two young men living in the apartment across the street, but at the same time it rings true, because the unfortunate fact is that Bruce is here to apprehend them as much as he is to try and get through to them. Because as much as he wishes the truth to be otherwise, all the evidence points towards Jason and Dick leaving as bloody a trail behind them through Bludhaven as they did Gotham.

Blockbuster’s murder had been proof of that.

The police had been happy to put it down to an attack by a rival gang, and Bruce could understand why. To normal eyes the extent of the damage to Blockbuster’s home and the efficient killing of his bodyguards looked beyond what two men alone were capable of, and since no one in Bludhaven was about to mourn Roland Desmond’s death they hadn’t been motivated to look any deeper into the details. But Bruce had, using techniques that went above and beyond what the police were capable of, and what he’d found had been chilling.

Jason and Dick has been clever in using the explosives to demolish Blockbuster’s home and remove most of the evidence of their presence there, but Desmond’s body itself had been big and resilient enough against the flames to still hold clues to the identity of his killers. Shotgun blasts to his knees had brought him to the ground, but it was the small, almost elegant incision of a blade between the vertebrae of his spine in just the right place to paralyse him from the waist down that was the real giveaway. Blockbuster had died from a heart attack after those wounds were inflicted, but before the bomb went off, and whoever it was that dealt him those wounds must have stood by and let it happen.

It was a killing that communicated anger, rage, maybe even sadism against the man who’d held Bludhaven under his controlling thumb for years.

Bruce doesn’t want to believe that last part. Anger at least was understandable, but his mind went back, over and over, to the knife wound. That was the work of a killer trained to precision: a Talon. Barbara especially had looked ill when she read that detail, for reasons that were easy to understand.

If only he could know exactly how far his children have fallen, maybe it would make this easier. Never before has he had a case where the side of him that is Bruce Wayne is so at war with Batman.

And worst of all is the knowledge that, down at the heart of it, it was his fault they’d ended up here. He was the one who fired Dick and let him leave all those years ago, unknowingly putting him at risk from the Court of Owls. _He_ was the one who hadn’t been there to save Jason when he needed him most.

Now Bruce’s only option is to pick up the pieces and try to put them back together again; to bring his children home before they can fall further beyond the point of no return.

He’s drawn out of the dark depths of his thoughts by a flicker of movement at Dick and Jason’s window. Despite the late hour, there’s very little light visible from inside the apartment, and Bruce guesses that any electric lights they have are turned down low out of consideration for Dick’s sensitive eyesight. He turns up the sensitivity on the cowl’s lenses a little to watch the window slide upwards, then holds his breath as his sons emerge.

Dick moves first, athletic and graceful in black and midnight blue, then Jason; a taller, broader figure, easily distinguished by the black leather jacket he wears over his identically red-accented suit. They swing out onto the fire escape together before Dick leads the way upwards, climbing towards the roof. They’re smiling, talking, and when Dick - who calls himself Bluebird now rather than Talon - makes it to the top he turns round, leaning down to offer Jason a hand up the rest of the way.

Bruce has to clench his fists as he resists the urge to swing over there and confront them now. There are both apologies and accusations held hostage on his tongue, but he’s not ready to let either fly yet. Not until he’s sure he can speak them without the risk of Jason and Dick being able to disappear on him again.

“Oracle.” he touches the cowl over his ear to activate the inbuilt communicator, “They’re on the move.”

“I see them.”

The two former Robin’s had been clever in choosing their home in Bludhaven, making sure their apartment was in the corner of the building next to the fire escape and not immediately in sight of any the city’s security cameras. That was why Bruce had to set up a few of his own - as well as let Barbara patch into the cowl’s feed - to give her eyes in the area.

“Tell Arsenal to get over here and start setting up. I’m going to investigate the apartment.”

Barbara is quiet for a moment, and Bruce thinks she’s about to tell him to hold off - that it’s too risky to go inside so long as its occupants are at large, but then finally she responds, “All right. The nanites are still active on Redwing, so I’ll keep a track on their position and warn you if they’re coming back. But be careful, there’ll be -”

“Alarms. I know.”

He waits until he’s absolutely certain Dick and Jason have left the area before moving forward, swinging over to their apartment and touching down lightly on the fire escape outside the window. Sure enough, the cowl’s scanners detect wires laid into the window frame. An alarm will set off if he attempts to open the window without disabling it.

Bruce considers his options for a moment, and his time limit, before drawing out the specialised tools he designed for this kind of situation from his belt. He could use a localised EMP to get inside more quickly, but he doesn’t want to risk disabling any of the other technology Jason and Dick might keep in the apartment. Tech that could contain sensitive information beneficial to any ongoing cases they may be looking into in Bludhaven. So instead he works slow and steady, until he’s confident it’s safe to open the window without drawing their attention back to his position.

Venturing inside feels more intrusive than he expected it to. Bruce usually tries to divorce himself from his feelings when conducting investigations into people’s personal lives, reminding himself that it’s a necessary part of each case, but this time around it’s not so easy. Even a quick glance at the apartment’s interior makes it clear that this isn’t just a base to Dick and Jason, it’s a home; the heart of the life his sons have chosen to make for themselves this past year.

He doesn’t bother to ask Barbara if she sees what he’s seeing: the cowl is always recording, and she’s always watching. If she has anything to say to him she’ll say it, of that he has no doubt.

Carefully, Bruce treads across the laminated floor, mindful of the sweep of his cape behind him as he begins to explore the apartment.

The lights are the first thing to catch his attention. Small, delicate fairy lights strung up around the walls like it’s Christmas, even though the festive season came to an end several months ago. They’ve been left on even in the absence of the apartment’s owners, providing a soft ambient light that doesn’t quite reach the shadowed corners of the main room and kitchen - explaining why there was no light visible through the windows from outside.

He stops by one wall, reaching up grasp one of the tiny bulbs between his thumb and forefinger. This isn’t something he expected to find at all.

The softness of these lights would be easier on Dick’s eyes than using the main lights, he reasons. That has to be the explanation for it. Providing enough light for Jason to see by without forcing his partner to have to wear eye protection indoors. It’s a considerate gesture, a symbol of two people who’ve worked out how to live in harmony with each other. And Bruce…

Bruce lets the bulb go. There’s a lot more ground to cover before Jason and Dick come back.

The layout of the living room and kitchen is simple and painfully ordinary. Cosy even. A worn couch and coffee table take center stage before a moderately sized television, while bookshelves line the walls; filled with tattered and worn paperbacks that were clearly purchased second hand.

In fact, everything looks second hand except for the technology. Bruce can read Jason’s influence in that. He’d never been comfortable spending large amounts of money on anything, or buying new what he could find used. Even when Bruce assured him multiple times that it was okay for him to spend the money he gave him on whatever he wanted, he’d still been hesitant and more likely to come back with purchases from thrift stores and charity stalls than the latest designer fashions. Bruce had long suspected that the rest of Jason’s money ended up being donated to various charities around the city, or handed out to people in need he knew back in Crime Alley.

He steps over a rainbow patchwork rug that clashes horribly even with the rest of the mismatched decor to investigate the stack of DVD’s by the television. Jason had never been the biggest movie fan, though he was always happy to watch one with Bruce or Alfred if asked; Dick on the other hand had easily been the bigger movie nut out of the pair of them. He would watch almost anything, but especially ridiculous comedies or cheesy action films.

Ones like the titles on display here, and the sight of them makes Bruce’s throat tighten up. It could be just a coincidence, but he hopes not. Any sign that Dick still exists in the Talon the Court of Owls created would be a welcome one, but Bruce can’t help wondering if he’s making a mountain out of a molehill by feeling that way. It’s been seven years since the Court was destroyed, and Dick had never displayed any signs of remembering his previous life when Bruce confronted him at the time.

After that… the next time Bruce saw him was when he put a knife through the Joker’s heart.

There are a couple of closed laptops sitting on the coffee table, ones Bruce makes a note to retrieve for Barbara to take a look into later on, but ignores for now. He moves on, searching through the kitchen first, then the bathroom, and finding nothing out of the ordinary in either space.

Then he steps into the single bedroom in the apartment. A single bedroom with a single bed inside.

Bruce doesn’t know how long he stands there, trying to think past the evidence in front of him, but the only reason he doesn’t react to the sound of footfalls behind him is because Oracle doesn’t see fit to warn him about their owner’s presence. Which means there’s only one person it can possibly be: Harper.

“You’re supposed to be setting up outside.”

“I was, and I did. So I thought I’d come down and see what you were snooping at instead.” Harper shrugs, his gaze going to the fairy lights that are strung across the headboard of the bed in this room. “It looks like a regular old nineties rom-com set up in here.”

“Arsenal.” Bruce growls.

“What?” His gaze follows Bruce’s down to the bed. To the neatly turned down sheets, and the depression in the mattress deep enough to indicate that two bodies lie here at night, side by side; close enough to almost appear as one to the untrained eye. “... oh. You’re freaking out aren’t you?”

Bruce doesn’t deign to answer him. Because he isn’t. He isn’t doing anything of the sort. Even as this new knowledge forms connections, twisting itself into pathways between previously unconnected events in his mind that hadn’t been there before - and raising more questions than answers.

“This is what Batman freaking out looks like, who knew.” Harper continues, tone acid-edged with bitterness as much as it is mocking. He folds his arms, “I guess this does explains that weird intimacy they had when I fought them the other night. And why Redwing was so determined to get me away from -”

“We’re leaving.” Bruce cuts him off, unwilling to hear anymore. “They’ll be back soon.”

“Right, sure, that’s why you want to get out of here. You really are just as repressed as -”

“ _Harper._ ” He cuts him off again, this time with a warning snarl.

There’s a snort as he turns around to leave the bedroom, and Bruce can feel Harper’s dislike of him aimed like twin laser beams directly at his back. He ignores it and keeps on walking, deliberately taking steps to divorce himself from feeling any kind of emotion as he refuses to be taken in again by the beguiling cosiness of the apartment around him.

They have a job to do, and for now this is the way things have to be.

 

*

 

Jason can feel his blood rushing through his veins as he watches Blue make the final dash and flip towards home, landing on top of their building with the kind of grace an Olympic gymnast could only hope to begin to imitate. A few seconds later, the heavier thud of his own boots touching down sounds on the roof, and his partner smiles as he pirouettes on his toes like a ballet dancer, stepping forwards to slip his arms around Jason’s neck before he’s even finished straightening up out of the crouch he landed in.

“Not bad,” his partner hums, fingers tangling in his hair, “You were only five seconds behind me this time.”

Jason snorts, a little out of breath as his hands go automatically to Blue’s waist. He can feel sweat running down to the small of his back underneath his suit thanks to the hot weather, as well as the itch of it where his hair has stuck to the back of his neck.

“And you’re only humouring me a little tonight.” he replies, his own smile so wide it makes his cheeks hurt, “You know I’ll never be able to keep up with you.”

Their noses brush and Blue laughs, delighted when Jason pulls him in closer. He’s been happier tonight, if only a little, relieved at the knowledge that Arsenal is out of their city, and they have at least this one night’s respite before anything more can go wrong. “You don’t do that bad a job at it, little bird.”

He moves his right hand so that he can brush his thumb across Jason’s lips, sighing at the way they automatically part around the digit. There’s nothing more enticing to him than seeing Blue in a playful mood, because it always leads to good things. _Pleasurable_ things, and the promise that Jason will wake up sticky and sore tomorrow, with new bruises to remind him who it is he belongs to.

“You want to take this inside?” Jason asks, kissing the pad of Blue’s thumb as he raises his eyebrows behind his red domino mask, making his meaning clear.

Blue’s smile deepens into a smirk. Not much had gone down in the way of illegal activity tonight in Bludhaven. Nothing that really required them to get their hands dirty, anyway. So they amused themselves by racing each other home instead - though Blue still has plenty of excess energy he’ll have to work off before he lets Jason get any sleep tonight.

“As opposed to on the roof? Are you getting adventurous on me, Jason?” Blue leans up to kiss him, to brush their mouths together in a way that promises more, but then he suddenly goes still, staring over his shoulder ar something Jason can’t see.

“Blue?” Jason says when he freezes, a line of tension settling into his shoulders the longer Blue goes without saying anything. “What’s -”

Before Jason can look himself, or enquire any further, Blue grabs him by the lapels of his jacket, hauling him round and tearing himself free of Jason’s hold so he can put himself in front of him, and Jason sees the glint of a knife in his hand from where he’s pulled it free of his belt.

 _Danger_ , screams the warning in his head, but it’s not until he looks past Blue to see exactly what’s going on that it becomes clear to Jason just how much trouble they’re in.

It’s not Brutale, who’s been giving them some trouble lately, nor Giz or Mouse. It’s not even someone like Tarantula, who they haven’t seen since the business with the fear toxin several months ago. It’s _Bruce_. Batman, who stands before them, a dark and shadowed figure wrapped in the dark folds of his cape, on the rooftop of their home.

Jason’s inner cry of denial turns into out a choked off sound when it tries to escape his throat, before he manages to override it with anger rather than fear. “You!” He snarls, “What are _you_ doing here?!”

It’s too soon. It’s… Batman coming here was an inevitability with Roy Harper’s discovery of Blue’s identity, he acknowledged that. But Jason had been hoping, _praying_ even, that they’d get at least a couple days more to prepare before the consequences of that revelation came crashing down around them.

He should have killed him. Good guy or not, he should have _killed_ that motherfucker.

Jason starts to move forwards before Bruce can answer, but he’s brought up short by the press of Blue’s hand against his chest. His partner holds him back, and despite every part of Jason screaming that he needs to be the one between Bruce and Blue, rather than the other way around, he lets him. He obeys, because he trusts Blue more than any other.

Blue’s the only person he trusts.

“Jason.” Bruce acknowledges him by name, but his tone of voice is all Batman, and that’s a warning sign if ever Jason heard one. “Dick…”

“That’s not my name.” Blue says, his voice cool and far calmer than Jason’s ever could be right now. But the hand holding the knife seems to tremble a little when he raises it up between them in a clear warning against Bruce getting any closer.

Bruce, arrogant fuck that he is, doesn’t listen. “It is, Dick. I know you don’t remember, but it is. You -”

“His name is whatever the fuck he says it is!” Jason snaps before Bruce can go any further. “Come on, _Batman_ , you’re supposed to be the World’s Greatest Detective,” he reaches back and unhooks the straps around his guns. “Pay some attention before you go around opening your mouth and letting shit fall out.”

That gets him. His strong jaw clenches under the cowl, and there’s movement beneath the cape that suggests he’s either clenching his fists or reaching for a batarang. Could be one, could be both. Jason knows which option his money’s on.

“Easy, little bird.” Blue murmurs next to him.

“I don’t want to fight you.”

Jason stares, then laughs. He lifts his gun, regardless of what Blue or Bruce wants and points it right at his former mentor. “Yeah, then what do you want? Dinner? A spot of tea? You’ve got about thirty seconds to explain and then get your ass out of our town before I open fire.”

“I want you both to come home.” Bruce says, not moving, probably not even blinking behind the blank white lenses of his cowl. It’s said matter of factly, and Jesus wept, did he really think that would work?

“Is that with or without chains?” Jason shakes his head, “We’re not going anywhere with you.”

“I’d prefer without.” Bruce openly admits, though to his credit his gaze drops, just for an instant. “What the two of you have been doing here -”

“Cleaning up the joint.”

“- can’t go on.” He talks over Jason, as if he’s still some dumb kid with big ideas and not enough skill to pull them off. “Not the way it has been. I know what you did to Blockbuster.”

“Blockbuster got what he deserved.” Blue interjects, and Jason gets a sadistic burst of pleasure at watching the shock ripple down Bruce’s body at the first Robin saying so. Except that he’s not the first Robin, not anymore, and that’s the part Bruce will never understand.

A fact he quickly demonstrates by saying, “Dick. Please, you don’t know what you’re saying. Your memories, you -”

“My name is Bluebird.” His partner says tightly, the knife glinting in his hand as he turns the blade to reflect the moonlight. “And I think you should leave now.”

Jason feels a burst of pride and admiration spark up in his chest when Blue says that, defending the identity he chose for himself. The name he’s worn like a badge of honour ever since he left Talon behind him.

“I can’t.” Bruce says, and for a moment he sounds grief-stricken. Disheartened. But as ever, too asininely stubborn to deviate from his chosen path. “I can’t walk away while the two of you continue to murder people. So I’m giving you both one final chance, come along with me quietly and let’s talk about this. I want to help you.”

They don’t need to exchange words, or even look at each other to be in agreement. Blue and Jason have been on this path together since the day he came back to Gotham, and Jason had promised his partner he would fight for their freedom and their home if that’s what it took.

He knows he speaks for both of them when he looks Bruce right in the eye and says, “Go to hell.”

Everything is quiet. Sincerely, terribly quiet. Then Bruce bows his head and all hell breaks loose.

The fact that he confronted them on top of the rooftop of their own home should have been a warning sign that this was planned and calculated; more than chance that Bruce happened to catch them here of all places.

Blue cocks his head, and his body tenses in the three seconds they have before the trap is sprung, “Jason -”

“Close your eyes!” Jason starts to warn him, expecting flashbangs. Which is why it takes him so much by surprise when smoke canisters explode on all four corners of the rooftop instead, erupting into a cloud of disorientating cover. Before Jason can even blink he feels himself being shoved backwards by Blue - at the same time as his partner leaps forwards - avoiding the soft whistle of a projectile being shot through the space he formerly occupied by the skin of his teeth.

Not just any projectile. An arrow. The tip of which opens up to release a net that would have enveloped him if Blue hadn’t been so quick to push him out of the way.

 _Son of a bitch!_ Jason thinks as he grabs for his gas mask, trying not to inhale any of the smoke. The fumes could be ordinary, or they could be knockout gas. Neither will do him any favours if it gets into his lungs.

As soon as this is over, he is officially going to kill Roy Harper.

Jason shoves the gas mask down over his face, hooking the strap around the back of his head before gasping in a grateful breath. He’s already lost track of both Blue and Batman, and he can only hope that his partner managed to get his gas mask on as well - though he’ll stand up to the polluted air better than Jason can. Jason whips round, pulling out both guns from his thigh holsters as he fires bullets blindly in the direction the arrow came from, before dropping down and hitting the hidden button in his domino that will switch their function to infrared.

Batman and Arsenal. That’s bad enough. But at least so far it doesn’t look like Bruce brought the latest Robin with him.

Maybe he’s finally learnt something about allowing children into dangerous situations after all.

With the infrared on he can see Blue and Batman suddenly, clashing together not too far away from him. Too close together in fact for Jason to be able to risk firing off a shot in their direction, so he slips his guns back into their holsters and starts running towards them instead, but not before the _thwip_ of another arrow sounds in his ear. Jason ducks instinctively, and under other circumstances that might have saved him, but not here. Here what he really should have done is jumped, because the arrow Harper fired this time is a bolas, and it wraps around Jason’s ankles in seconds, sending him crashing down onto the rooftop.

If he didn’t have the gas mask over his mouth he’d be cursing up a storm right now.

Jason grabs his kris out of its thigh holster, rolling over as he reaches to saw at the weighted rope currently binding his legs. And bless Talia for what might be the best gift he’s ever received in his life, because there is no other blade out there that could make such short work of these lines. Just in time too, because a second after he frees himself the reinforced end of a bow swings at his head, and only a swift roll forwards saves Jason from having his part in this fight ended prematurely.

Harper stands before him in the smoke, and Jason reaches up, turning the infrared off in his domino as the wind starts to clear it from the air around them. He doesn’t need any special kind of vision for this.

“Nice bruise.” he says, as soon as he judges it safe to remove his gas mask, throwing it to the ground and weighing his knife in his hand.

Harper just shakes his head, the mark Jason left on his face during their last encounter standing livid against the skin of his forehead. “Fuck you, kid.”

Then they’re going, throwing punches and kicks at each other full pelt amidst swings of their chosen weapons. Harper is good, Jason realises, better than he was last night. He moves with a speed and strength that belies the build of him, and with years more experience than Jason has behind him even with all of his training.

He was playing him before, Jason realises, and it galls him that he didn’t catch onto it. Which means that Bruce -

“You son of a bitch!” he roars as he tackles Harper down. He can’t even see Bruce and Blue anymore, which scares the shit out of him. With any luck Blue is just leading Bruce away, using his superior speed and acrobatics to lose him so that he can double back to Jason. Then they can get out of here, to one of their safehouses elsewhere in the city and recuperate.

He hopes that’s true, as Harper rolls them over, punches him in the jaw, then wrenches the knife out of his hand, because the alternative is far worse.

Jason headbutts him in retaliation, smacking his forehead into Harper’s nose and jaw. A move that would be far more effective if he still wore a helmet, but as it is the effects are still promising. Harper recoils enough for Jason to drive a knee up into his gut, momentarily winding him.

Then before he can do anything else, there’s salvation. A black gloved hand seizes Roy by his throat and throws him away from Jason.

“Blue.” he gasps, relieved as his partner looks down at him, then reaches out his hand to pull Jason back up onto his feet. “You’re okay! Where’s Batman?”

“I lost him, but it won’t be for long.” Blue answers, confirming Jason’s suspicions. His eyes stay fixed on Harper even as he reaches up to run his fingers through Jason’s hair. “We need to go.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

“Dick!”

Blue goes still beside Jason as Harper calls out to him. His voice rough and raw.

“Dick, wait! Don’t go!”

The man staggers to his feet, wiping the blood from his face. His bow lies out of reach across the roof some distance away where Jason kicked it during their scuffle.

“I told you,” his partner says stiffly, “That’s not my name.”

“Blue…” Jason tugs at his elbow urgently. Bruce could get back here at any second, they don’t have time for this.

“You were my friend, man! Don’t you remember? My best friend!” Harper says, just as urgently. “We met when we were kids. We fought together, lived together. Don’t you remember any of it? The Teen Titans: Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Aqualad!” He takes in a deep breath, “Starfire! Kory! Don’t you remember her? She was your girlfriend. You loved her.”

Harper has no idea what he’s doing, Jason realises as he pulls one of his guns out of its holster. Not idea at all. If shouting names was all it took to bring Blue’s memories of being Dick Grayson back, none of them would be in this situation in the first place.

Yet Blue keeps staring at him, and Jason doesn’t know what it is that’s going on in his head, only that they have no time for it. “Blue!”

He snaps his fingers in front of his partner’s face at the same time as he fires a shot at Harper, and that seems to be the ticket. Harper throws himself to the side and rolls, barely avoiding getting clipped by the bullet, while Blue starts and turns, face paler than ever under his dark hair and eye mask. “Jason…”

“Run. We have to run.” Jason says to him urgently, catching a glimpse of dark movement out of the corner of his eye.

Blue nods and they dart off, Jason leading the way to the rooftop’s edge. They’ll head east first, he decides, run up The Spine with all its noise and distraction, then loop back and hide as necessary until they can be sure they’ve thrown off their tail. The safehouse near the docks that they went to the other night flashes up in his mind, already fully stocked and recently used. If they can get there then -

There’s a sound. Small and unobtrusive. A _pip!_ only a little louder than the sound of an arrow flying from the string. Blue’s footsteps behind him suddenly falter and fumble, and Jason whips around, turning just in time to catch his partner as he collapses forwards into his arms. “Blue?!”

Jason sinks down with him onto the rooftop, his fingers fumbling across Blue’s back and then up until he finds the dart lodged in his neck above the line of his suit. Not an arrow or a bullet, he realises with a heavy feeling of relief, before it’s soured by the realisation that the tranquiliser used inside the dart is one powerful enough to knock even Blue for a loop.

He looks up, to Harper, who holds the dart gun in his hand that was origin of the shot. “You motherfucker!” Jason screams as he realises what he’s done, spit flying from his mouth with the force of his shout.

Distress is on Harper’s face too, like he can’t believe what he just did either. But then that shock turns to resolve as he stares Jason down. Jason lifts his gun again, this time aiming for a headshot as brilliant green blooms behind his irises for the first time in months. He’s thinking of nothing else as he’s consumed with hatred, _rage,_ and it’s only the sting of Bruce’s batarang against his wrist that saves Roy Harper’s life tonight.

“It’s over, Jason.” Batman says emotionlessly, as his gun skitters away across the roof.

“Fuck you!” He shouts at the two of them, “Fuck you both! Just leave us alone! I’ll kill you if you come any closer!”

They move forwards towards him slowly, both aware of how dangerous he still is even as he cradles Blue in his arms and attempts to lift him from the roof. Escaping from them while carrying Blue is an impossibility, but in his Lazarus-fuelled haze that doesn’t mean Jason won’t at least try.

But then fingers touch his neck, and he turns his gaze down in shock as Blue lifts his head to look back at him. Somehow he’s still awake, just barely. “Jason…”

“Blue?” He looks down, whispering back urgently. “Blue, I… I think we’re…” Boned. Fucked. Insert your own colourful adjective here.

“You need... run.” Even with the words half slurred, Jason can understand Blue’s meaning loud and clear.

“What?! What… no way. No fucking way!” He hisses, “I am not leaving you!”

“You…” Jason doesn’t know if it’s pure strength of will, or Blue’s regenerative abilities that are helping him stay awake right now, possibly a combination of both, but either way it’s an impressive feat as he struggles on. “... you… find me… but if we both…”

Jason swallows. He doesn’t want to admit it, but Blue has a point. They can’t escape from Batman and Arsenal together now; either one of them goes down or both of them do. But if Jason runs… if Jason runs, he can try to rescue Blue later. He has the means and knowledge to do it, even if Bruce will be on the lookout for him.

Except that means leaving Blue behind him now, an action which would have been unthinkable to Jason alone without his encouragement. “I-I can’t…”

“Little bird…” Blue’s fingers manage to brush his throat, over his collar and the bruises that linger beneath it. His clawed fingertips catch and pull at Jason’s skin, making it bleed.

Jason looks down at him, then at Batman and Arsenal who are almost upon them. His hands shake, emotions warring between the poisonous green bile of the Lazarus Pit’s influence and Blue’s logical reasoning.

Run or stay.

Lose now, or escape to fight another day.

Stay here with Blue, and probably be separated from him in some dark cell in the Batcave while Bruce fruitlessly tries to get through to him, or make the choice to leave him now, with a greater hope for them to reunite in the future.

There really is only one choice he can make.

“I’ll find you, beautiful. I promise.” Jason whispers, as Blue finally sinks down into the full depths of unconsciousness. There’s a flashbang concealed in the cuff of his jacket, and Jason palms it now, even as he makes a show of laying Blue carefully down on the roof and getting ready to fight.

“Jason.” Bruce is saying urgently, “Come with us. I promise everything will be all right if you just -”

Jason looks up, stares him solidly in the eye. In his voice is both an unspoken threat and a promise.

“Screw you, Bruce. This isn’t over, not by a long shot.”

Then he closes his eyes behind the lenses of his domino and ignites the flashbang.

Seconds after that, he’s gone.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So who out there is ready for some more pain with the T&H universe this week? I know I am.

Blue doesn’t sleep.

Not when he falls. Not when Jason leaves him, a promise to bring him home whispered against his brow. He doesn’t sleep as his ears ring with the wound of what Jason did to get away from Batman and Arsenal, and white sparks dance behind his closed eyelids.

He doesn’t sleep, as his body and the drug war it out, neither one quite able to conquer the other. He’s awake, if barely: unable to move, hardly able to think or take in anything that’s going on around him. Time passes in a clatter; fast then slow then fast again. Arms lift him, carrying him with care. He rests in a vehicle, metal wrapped around his wrists and ankles. He hears voices, men’s voices, garbled and too distant to understand for the most part, then a woman’s, but he can’t raise his own. The one time he starts to claw his way back to motion is when a needle presses into his neck and sends him spiralling back down into paralysis again.

At some point, someone - the woman? - touches his hair, smoothing through it gently. She shushes him, tells him everything will be all right, and he denounces her as a liar only in his own mind.

He wants to go home. He wants _Jason_. That’s the only thing he wants, and he’s just aware enough to know it’s the one thing he’s not going to get.

It’s a nightmare, a lucid dream he can’t wake up from; but finally, some indeterminate time later, Blue manages to open his eyes.

He doesn’t move otherwise. Doesn’t so much as twitch from the position in which he finds himself. Instinct and training warn him to stay still while he tries to work out the tangled web of his thoughts and feelings, to the point that even his breathing pattern doesn’t change, staying locked in the slow deep rhythm of a sleeper even as the last of the drug is burnt from his system.

He’s curled on his side, laid on a soft surface with his limbs tucked in as tight as they can get to his body, away from the chill in the air which registers against his bare fingers when he cautiously begins to twitch his muscles, searching for any signs of unhealed wounds or restraints. He finds none. His arms and legs are free, and when Blue swallows he doesn’t register a collar around his neck either; only soft fabric rubs against his toes when he bends them.

Someone - he doesn’t know who - covered him with a blanket before they left him here. Wherever here is. The same someone who must have slipped a thin pillow beneath his head and took off his Bluebird uniform in exchange for something else, something softer.

Batman? Or more likely one of the others in his employ, and from that realisation it’s not a huge leap of logic to assume that he’s been brought to the Batcave below Wayne Manor, far from Bludhaven and anything familiar.

Closing his eyes again, Blue tells himself to stay calm and not panic. To keep breathing, slow and steady, in and out, until he can trust himself to keep a level head. No easy task when he reflects that without his uniform he’s weaponless, with no tools on hand to help aid an escape. All that is left is his own body and mind, which leaves him… not _helpless_ , exactly, but closer to it than he has been in a very long time.

The only comfort he has in this frightening moment is remembering that Jason was able to run before they took him. The knowledge that, even if he’s here, trapped, somewhere out there his partner is free.

Continuing to try and feign sleep is pointless, other than for putting off the inevitable. There will be cameras watching him now, mostly likely with microphones to record any sound he makes as well. That means the most proactive thing he can do now is get up and take proper stock of his surroundings.

The blanket slides from his shoulders as Blue sits up on the bed, and he represses a shiver when he looks down at himself first to see exactly what he’s wearing. A loose-fitting long-sleeved shirt and soft cotton pants, it turns out. When he lifts the fabric of his sleeve to his nose it smells only of laundry detergent, but not the brand Jason uses; not the scent of home.

He has to swallow thickly at how hard that observation hits him.

Metal walls surround him on three sides, accompanied by a metal floor and metal ceiling. The bunk he’s lying on is metal too beneath a thin padded mattress, fixed to the wall by heavy hinges: meaning that he could flip it up if he wanted to and make more room for himself in the confined space to move in. The idea of breaking those hinges and using the bunk itself as some kind of battering ram briefly occurs to him as well, but on second thought they’re made of thick durable steel. Too thick for someone like him to break.

The Court’s ‘gifts’ to him mean that Blue can see in the dark and heal faster than most, but they stop well short of giving him the strength to bend metal.

To his right are what amounts to bathroom facilities in this place: a toilet hidden behind a screen to give the illusion of privacy, with a sink next to it and a tiny cubicle of a shower, while on his left is a door, made from a kind of frosted glass that makes it impossible to see through to what’s on the other side. He doesn’t need to take a closer look at that to understand that the glass will be too strong and thick for him to break by hand as well.

It’s a cell. More comfortable than the last one he occupied, but a cell all the same.

Fighting back the urge to panic again, Blue stands up, pacing from door to shower and counting the steps, just for something to do as his mind starts to race. The metal floor is too cold to be comfortable against his bare feet, but he’s always felt better when he’s moving. More sure of himself when his body is in motion.

He has to get out of here somehow. Find a way out, or make one if none exists. He convinced Jason to run with the reasoning that his partner would be able to rescue him later, but he hadn’t meant it. He simply knew it was the only way to get Jason to listen to him; he never would have left Blue behind otherwise. He would have fought instead and ended up captured because of it, and then they’d both be sitting in a cell right now.

Blue couldn’t risk that happening. He can’t risk _him_. Which means he’s going to have to escape on his own before Jason comes up with a plan to attempt a rescue. He knows that as capable and knowledgeable as he is about this place - if it is indeed the Batcave - Batman will be expecting him now. Things will have changed since Jason was last here, he’ll be on guard, and Blue refuses to face a future that ends with Jason in prison too.

He stops pacing then, facing the door with both his fists clenched down by his sides.

It won’t be long before someone comes to talk to him. They must know he’s awake by now, so the only question is _who_ that someone will be, and what exactly it is they’ll do when they get here. Will it be the same desperate pleading he’s dealt with in the past, or something else entirely now that he’s at their mercy and they don’t have to worry about him disappearing on them? He doesn’t want to think about it, but locked here in this cell, with both his and Jason’s fates hanging in the balance, he has no other choice but to do so.

Blue abruptly turns and returns to the bunk, stripping the pillow, sheet, and thin mattress off the sheet of metal before throwing them down onto the floor beneath it. Once he’s satisfied with the arrangement, he then crouches down and crawls in on top of the improvised nest before wrapping himself back up in the blanket to wait.

At least this way they won’t be able to watch him all the time.

 

*

 

An hour passes, maybe more before he hears the sound of someone at the door. Blue doesn’t doze or even slightly relax during that time. He remains constantly on guard, nerves jumping at every little noise outside his cell.

Water dripping. The distant hum of machinery. Sometimes something like the soft squeak of a dozen animals far away.

The tread of wheels over stone.

Then there’s a knock, and it’s laughably polite for the situation he’s in.

_They never used to knock._

It takes a moment for Blue to remember that it’s not the Court holding him this time. Not his old masters but someone new. When he eventually decides to roll out from under the bunk instead of ignoring the call, he’s surprised to find that it’s not Batman waiting on the other side of the now clear glass door for him: it’s a woman.

She must be the same one whose voice he heard before. The one he thinks tried to reassure him that everything would be okay when they tore him away from his home and partner.

Her red hair is pulled into a ponytail at the back of her head, and she has blue eyes behind the glasses that sit perched on the end of her nose. He thinks she’d be tall if she were standing instead of sitting down in a wheelchair, with a covered tray of food balanced in her lap and a small tablet computer tucked down between her thigh and the chair arm.

“Hello, Blue.” She says softly, lowering her hand back down from the now clear glass door.

He doesn’t know her, he realises. He doesn’t know _her,_ which puts him even more on edge than he was before. He’d have some estimation of what to expect from Batman - even from the archer - but this woman is an unknown entity, addressing him by his chosen name rather than the one he expected her to use.

Blue narrows his eyes as he straightens up from his crouch. Choosing not to respond directly as he steps slowly closer to the door.

She still smiles at his approach. A smile that reaches her eyes, which lets him know it’s real, but with pain beneath it. Pain that bizarrely makes him want to reach through the glass and do something other than rip her throat out for being part of the plot that put him in here.

“It’s good to see you.” Her voice is thick with repressed emotion. “I know that probably doesn’t mean much to you since you don’t remember me, but it is.”

She pauses. A barely noticeable hesitation, but Blue is astute enough to recognise the space for what it is: an opening, an opportunity for him to interrupt her and deny her words. She wants him to recognise her, with the same longing desire that Batman and Arsenal do, she’s just better at hiding it than they are.

Needless to say, he has no response to that either.

Whoever she is, she’s also good enough not to let it get to her - or at least not to let it show. “My name is Barbara Gordon. But Jason may have talked to you about me under another name: Oracle. Or possibly Batgirl?”

Oracle. Batgirl.

Those names click where the first one doesn’t. Jason had indeed mentioned someone called Oracle back at the beginning when Blue was still Talon and he was still the Red Hood, calling her the eyes and ears of the superhero community; a genius hacker who could get into any system. Batgirl on the other hand…

He thinks about newspapers suddenly. Heavy handed headlines. Black and white snapshots surrounded by print. Pictures out of time: a smirking teenage girl next to a boy with a brilliant grin, who waved at the camera as he zipped by.

Pictures of someone who doesn’t exist anymore.

He’d found them in the Gotham library archives. Slipping into the building at night during his first few months of freedom, he’d dug into the information at hand; learning about both of the names he’d worn before the Court made him into the man he is today. He’d read, he’d learned. Then he’d walked away, leaving the names where they belonged: in the past. He’d felt nothing for them then; he feels nothing for them now.

So he tells himself.

“Are you going to let me go?” He asks her suddenly, breaking his silence at last.

She looks startled at the sound of his voice, as if it isn’t what she was expecting. “I...”

“Are you going to let me go?”

Barbara shakes her head, recovering quickly and doing him the favour of being honest in her cruelty at least. “No.”

He turns away, “Then I don’t want to talk to you.”

Blue sits down on the bare bunk, rather than crawling back underneath it the way he wants to, keeping his back to her as he leans his head against the cool metal wall and sending what he hopes is a clear message that, unless she’s willing to compromise on that front, he wants to be left alone.

It’s a message that goes unheeded.

“Let me rephrase,” Barbara clears her throat, “What I meant was, I can’t let you go _yet_. But whether that’s possible in the future is up to you. I can’t force you to talk to me or anyone else, Blue, but I can tell you that staying silent won’t help you get out of here either.”

He snorts softly, but otherwise continues to hold his tongue.

“You have no reason to trust or believe us. I understand that. I know you must be afraid, too. But I want you to know that I am honestly, genuinely not out to hurt you. None of us are. That’s why I wanted to speak to you first.” Her voice softens once more. “We brought you here because we want to help you, Blue. Do you understand that?”

Blue turns his head, just enough that he can glimpse the brightness of her hair out of the corner of his eye. The light in his cell and the space beyond is kept dim, but with his eyesight the sun might as well be shining in the cave. He can pick out every detail clear as day, right down to the intricate patterns of her shirt.

He shakes his head. “By holding me prisoner.”

“You’re a very hard man to talk to otherwise.”

His fingers itch for a knife. Not that it would do him any good in this glass and steel cage. “I can’t give you what you want.”

“What do you think I want?”

He looks at her again. Stares really. Counting on the unnatural colour of his eyes to do most of the work for him. It takes time - a lot more time than he would have initially expected, but eventually she looks down, slipping her glasses off her face to wipe them on her sleeve.

The sight of her bare face turns his stomach a little.

“All right. Yes. I won’t lie to you.” Barbara puts them back on and the effect is mercifully lost. “You and I were close when we were teenagers. Friends. Good friends. Good -” She cuts herself off from whatever she was about to say. “That’s why I’m here. Because I care about you, and I miss you.” her voice is raw. “It doesn’t matter what name you choose to call yourself by or what you do, that will never change.”

There’s a creak of leather and plastic as she leans forwards. Blue keeps watch as she sets the tray onto a shelf in front of the door. He can make out the segmented part of the glass that will slide upwards to allow it entry; the lock only on her side, not his. The gap is big enough he could slip his arm through it, if there was any reason to.

Barbara pushes a button, the glass raises, and the tray slides through onto an identical shelf in the cell’s interior. He doesn’t move to take it. He’s not hungry enough. Not yet.

“I’m not going to ask you to be the boy you were, Blue. I’m a realist. I don’t expect miracles. I know that even if you were to remember everything the Court took from you today, that wouldn’t happen. People change, that’s the way the world works, as much as we might wish it didn’t.” He’s surprised by how candidly she speaks, meeting and holding his gaze with her own so that he couldn’t look away even if he wanted to. “But there is something I want to know from you. One question I want you to answer for me when you’re ready.”

She pauses. He waits. Watching as her resolve finally wavers, the wetness of her eyes made huge by the lenses of her glasses.

“Why. Why don’t you want to remember? The Court took everything from you. Your memories, your home. The people who love you. They stole your whole life so that they could make your their weapon, Dick.” And there it is, that name spilling out from between her lips like a passionate accident. “Why haven’t you ever tried to see if there’s a chance you could get it back?”

A shiver that has nothing to do with the temperature in his cell runs down his back. “There’s nothing to remember.”

“That’s not what I asked.” She says, smiling sadly. “Just… think about it. Eat. I’ll be back to see you later.”

Barbara rolls herself back from the door as the glass once more turns opaque, cutting off his view of the outside and finally leaving Blue alone again.

Just the way he wanted.

 

*

 

Roy’s the one who offers her the packet of tissues from his pocket when she gets back to the main platform of the cave where the rest of their merry band of conspirators are waiting. Barbara takes it with a grateful nod before lifting her glasses so that she can wipe at her eyes. The ten minutes it had taken to roll herself back up here hadn’t been enough time to stop them from watering completely.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” He says understandingly. “You okay?”

“No, but that doesn’t matter.” she shakes her head, forcibly schooling her expression back into something resembling calm before crumpling the tissue up in her hand and placing her glasses back on her face. “Has he touched the food yet?”

“Not yet, Miss Gordon.” Alfred says somberly from where he stands at Bruce’s side. “It appears that as of now, Master Dick is once more in retreat, but I’m sure he’ll eat when he’s ready.”

Barbara looks up at the camera feeds displayed on the giant central screen of the computer. Sure enough, there’s no sign of Dick on any of them, except for the trailing end of the blanket peeking out from under the edge of the bunk. He’d been quick to figure out the one blind spot in the cell (other than the shower) and exploit it. She’d smiled at the time, for as much as it hurt her to see him hiding from them - and as much as she tried to remind herself that the man they’re dealing with today isn’t the boy she remembered - it was still such a Dick thing to do.

“I hope so. We still don’t know exactly how his metabolism works.”

“He processed the anaesthetic fast enough.” Roy comments, “You’d think he’d be starving by now. That’s how most regenerative types work, right?”

Barbara grimaces. Giving Dick a second dose of the drug was an action she wishes hadn’t been necessary. But when the heart rate monitor started beating a faster tempo as they drove back to Gotham, they’d reached a quick consensus that none of them wanted to take the risk of dealing with an angry Talon in close quarters; even a restrained one. Injecting him again had been the safest way to ensure they all made it to the Cave in one piece.

“I don’t think hunger is the reason why he’s holding back.” She observes quietly, sparing a look towards Bruce. He’s watching the monitors with a single minded focus, his already pale skin completely washed out by the cold blue light coming off the screens. “He doesn’t trust us.”

Roy flinches at the reminder, folding his well muscled arms across his chest “You seemed to get a reaction out of him though. When you said you wanted to go first, that wasn’t what I expected.”

“It’s what we need to know.” She insists, resisting the urge to clean her glasses again, purely for something to do with her hands. “You saw the way he avoided answering me. There’s something there. Something he’s hiding. The sooner we know what it is, the sooner we can figure out where to go from here.”

“Shit.” Roy mutters, “I know if I were in his place I’d want to know. I’d be fucking furious.”

“Language, please, Mister Harper.” Alfred interjects, looking wan himself as he stands on the sidelines with his hands clutched in front of him. Even he hadn’t been able to maintain perfect composure when they brought Dick home, but still she envied him his fortitude.

“He didn’t ask about Jason.” Bruce interjects suddenly, finally stepping into the conversation, though his eyes remain fixed on the screen.

“Who gives a f-” Roy starts to say, before correcting himself, “- er, monkey’s.”

“Either he doesn’t think we’ll give him a straight answer, or he’s reached his own conclusions about his whereabouts already.” Jason’s escape sat ill with her, though perhaps not for the reasons Roy might think. The second Robin was his own tragedy, and Bruce wasn’t the only one who remembered the eager young boy he’d been when they’d teamed up for that one brief mission before the Joker took her legs away. Barbara still believes he has his heart in the right place, even if his methods these days are questionable at best.

Conflicted didn’t even begin to cover her feelings when she’d learned that it had been Jason and Dick together who finally wiped that madman off the face of the earth.

Jason had been both quicker and smarter than they’d accounted for when they failed to take him down with Dick. Using the nano-trackers, Barbara had initially traced him to what appeared to be a safe house on the outskirts of Bludhaven, and he’d lingered there - or appeared to, until a sudden explosion took the building up. There’d been no body to find when the emergency services and Batman arrived, leaving her with the simple conclusion that without knowing exactly how they had been tracking him, Jason had taken the safest course of action by destroying everything he’d been carrying with him at the time of their encounter.

Now he’s out there somewhere, with a fresh change of clothes and no doubt furious that they’re holding Dick. It’s only a matter of time before he’ll attempt to come for him. The revelation of just how deep their relationship went attested to that.

“I’ll speak to him next.” Bruce scowls, as if that was ever in any doubt. Barbara had to fight tooth and nail to be allowed to go first, reasoning that Dick was less likely to react hostilely to her presence than Bruce or Roy’s. She wasn’t one of the ones who attacked him, after all.

He was still hostile, of course. But not to the level of viciousness she thinks he would have reached if Bruce had been the first person he saw on waking.

“Give him a few more hours first. At least the chance to eat.” Barbara tells him sternly, drawing herself up in her chair. “We won’t accomplish anything if he stays on the defensive.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?” She asks, the bitterness bleeding into her voice no matter how much she tries to hold it back.

Bruce’s eyes narrow. His shoulders square. He’s readying himself to argue with her, when the day is once again saved by Alfred’s timely intervention. Trained negotiators couldn’t do half as good a job at keeping them from ripping each other’s throats out as he does.

“Capital idea, Miss Gordon. Certainly there is enough for us all to be getting on with in the meantime. And one suspects that you would each benefit from getting some rest of your own before then.” He says sternly. Then his voice softens, “We’ve waited this long to see our Master Dick again. A few more hours will not be such a hardship.”

Bruce still looks ready to argue, but he’ll always listen to Alfred the way he never will anyone else. At least partly. “Fine.” Barbara watches as he gives a stiff nod and sits down in front of the computer. “I’ll wait.”

“Indeed.” Alfred says dryly, “It’ll give you some time to decide how you’ll explain this to Master Tim when he returns to Gotham. Miss Gordon, Mister Harper, I assume you’ll be staying in the manor for the duration of this venture?”

“Right on, Alfred, my man.”

“Very well. I’ve prepared some guest rooms for you both just in case. The left wing, Miss Gordon. I assume you remember the way?”

“I do, Alfred. Thank you.”

Roy nods gratefully as well, then follows after Barbara when she beckons him forwards. Passing by the twin memorial cases on the way to the elevator with a long lingering glance. “I wondered where the new kid was.”

“Working on other cases.” Barbara explains. The doors of the lift open immediately and she wheels herself in, waiting for Roy to step in beside her before hitting the button to take them up into the manor. “I asked Bruce not to involve him in this. The more dangerous part anyway.”

Which was supposed to be over when they had both Dick _and_ Jason in custody, but there’s no way they’ll be able to keep the secret from Tim now that Dick is sitting in the cave’s basement. They can’t keep him out forever, and with Jason still on the loose they have to take into account the numerous ways he might try to come at them to get his partner back. That means Tim needs to be prepared.

“Figure he’s got enough kids hurt, huh?”

Barbara closes her eyes for a moment.

 _Yes_ comes the gut response. The angry vindictive part of her that feels like it will never die. She didn’t blame Bruce for what happened to her, but Dick and Jason’s fates were another story. No matter how much she tried to be rational about those events and Bruce’s culpability in each situation, she still blamed him. Both for what he hadn’t known and couldn’t prevent.

It wasn’t fair, but then neither was life. Fair was a world in which she could walk, Dick was still Dick, and Jason had never died.

“He idolised both Dick and Jason when they were Robin.” Is what she chooses to say instead. “I didn’t want his first meeting with them to be a violent one.”

Roy doesn’t believe her, Barbara can tell that at once. But it’s fine. She’s had a long time to deal with her anger at Bruce. For Roy, however, it’s still fresh. “Sure.”

“What about you?” She asks to turn the subject, “Your daughter, Lian, how long are you going to be able to stay here?” Rough around the edges he might be, but Roy’s appearance in Bludhaven had given Barbara a welcome ally.

“Why am I not surprised you know her name.” Roy’s lips quirk into a tired smile. “I’m not sure. I should’ve… I should’ve been back already. But I can’t… I don’t want to leave him while…” He trails off. His expression is so conflicted that Barbara can’t help reaching out and touching his hand to comfort him. Not when she knows exactly how he feels.

“We’ll figure something out.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *waves* I finally got past my roadblock with this one, so here is more terribleness and misunderstands and people making poor choices based in emotion rather than understanding. Warnings for everything that implies.
> 
> Enjoy!

Blue waits for Batman to come. He waits for what feels like an entire day.

Time passes, in drips of water from the faucet at the corner of his cell, and the impatient tap of his own fingers against the floor as he hides from the cameras beneath the bed. The food Blue doesn’t touch, though he does drink the water. More comes later in the day; he hears the sound of the drawer in the door opening to allow it, but he doesn’t move to see. He just waits, sleeping sometimes, but mostly counting out the seconds, the minutes, the hours; trying not to think of the words of Barbara Gordon, and more of Jason, free somewhere outside this place.

Some inner voice whispers to him that this is purposeful, a tactic. That there’s merit in making a prisoner wait, stewing in their own thoughts. It sounds a lot like his own, though he can’t remember ever being taught that fact.

Then finally, sitting on the bare bed with his eyes fixed on the opposing wall and his knees drawn to his chest, Blue hears the sound of someone stepping up outside the front of his cell.

He doesn’t have to turn his head to know the opaque glass has turned translucent again.

Fighting not to tense up at the sound, he keeps his head facing forward. He won’t look. Not yet.

The scrape of metal against stone follows the footsteps. A chair? He hears the hinges creaking as a weight settles against it. Another scuff of boots on the floor.

At first there’s silence. Does Batman mean to wait him out? For Blue to talk first? If so, he will be waiting a very long time. One of his first lessons with the Owls had been patience, and they’d taught it to him the hard way (in the labyrinth: cold and water and _kneel_ ). It’s a lesson Blue has never forgotten, even as he’s worked hard to shake off so much of everything else they did to him in the time since he walked free.

“You haven’t eaten.”

Those aren’t the words he was expecting. Blue looks to the trays where he left them on the floor. Their dishes still covered. The food cold and untouched.

“It’s not poisoned.”

“I’m not hungry.”

The words slip out of him, sharp and petulant. He didn’t mean to let them.

“Dick—”

“That’s not my name.”

“It is your name. The name you were born with. The name your parents gave you. What the Court did to you doesn’t change that.”

Chalk dust on his fingertips.

“It’s not my name.” he repeats.

So long as Batman refuses to acknowledge that, Blue has nothing else to say to him.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the tightening of the man’s jaw. Batman has come to him as Bruce Wayne today. No cape, no cowl. His face is completely bare. Maybe like Barbara Gordon, he’s hoping that it will mean something to Blue, though it never has before. He can count the number of face to face encounters they’ve had together on one hand, and not one has ever produced a spark of memory.

Only frustration, and a strange feeling of reluctance to actually do the man harm.

“Di—” Wayne opens his mouth to speak again, but then there’s a minor pause. The tilt of his head one that Blue has come to recognise as someone listening to a hidden voice in their ear. He thinks he can guess whose. “... Bluebird.”

Blue has heard his name said in many ways (in love, in cherishment; sometimes fond exasperation, and often fear from those he hunted) but never like this. Never so grudgingly. Never like it causes someone harm to say it instead of the alternative.

Blue turns his head to look at Batman. It’s his only concession.

“I didn’t want it to have to be this way.” 

“Then let me go.” Blue says shortly.

“I can’t do that.”

“You mean won’t.”

“What you and Jason have been doing in Bludhaven can’t go on.” Batman says, more calmly.

Blue cocks his head, “Fighting crime?”

“Killing people.”

Of course. He just barely refrains from rolling his eyes. “And that’s your excuse for keeping me here.”

“It’s not an excuse.”

“Yes, it is.” Blue shakes his head, because he knows the truth even if they won’t say it. He refuses to budge from this point. “If the lives I took were all you cared about, the only reason you came after me, I’d be in prison. In your Asylum, like every other killer you catch.”

“We both know it wouldn’t hold you.”

“You made a cell that can hold me here, you can make one that holds me there.”

Wayne stiffens. His jaw clenches before he opens his mouth, “Dick—”

“That’s not my name,” his voice sharpens to a razor’s edge, “and if you can’t remember that, I’m done talking to you.”

Their eyes meet, gold to blue in a battle that is for a moment unyielding on both sides. It feels familiar to Blue, if only in _that_ moment, and a moment is all it takes to unnerve him. He wants to pull back, move away, except that in here there’s nowhere he can go where Batman’s voice cannot reach him.

“Why ‘Bluebird’?” Wayne suddenly asks him, instead of arguing further. 

The question throws Blue even more off balance. It’s one of the last he was expecting. Not from a man who is so insistent that in him are the remains of a dead boy. His mind races, trying to figure out the motivation behind the question. What possible reason Batman would have to care about why he chose the name he did.

When he doesn’t answer right away, Wayne takes it as a sign to prompt him further. “When we last met, you still called yourself Talon. Why did you change it?”

His voice isn’t harsh, but it is commanding, digging into a part of Blue’s brain that shouldn’t be there and compelling him to answer. “Because I didn’t want to be Talon any longer.”

“Why?”

Blue bites the inside of his cheek. An action he hopes is less than noticeable to ground himself. “The Court of Owls is dead.”

Wayne continues to study him, his eyes sharp and intelligent as they stay fixed on Blue’s face. “The Court has been gone a long time.”

_Not as long as you think._ Blue almost says, but doesn’t. Even as recently as four years ago, he’d still been hunting them. The last Owl death at his hands had been six months after Jason died, in fact. A man, who even in his last seconds of life before Blue slit his throat, had still been trying to give Talon orders.

He could tell Batman that. Maybe it would distract him, but Blue dismisses the idea almost as soon as he thinks of it.

He knows there’s nothing more important on Bruce Wayne’s mind now than him.

“So why Bluebird?” The man prods again, in a gentler tone of voice than he used before when Blue goes too long without responding.

“Why do you care?” he asks in turn. Both because he wants to know, and to buy himself more time.

Wayne considers his answer carefully, and when he does speak, it’s with far more feeling than Blue ever expected. “Dick chose the name Robin for himself back when he first became my partner. It was your mother’s nickname for you, before she died. He told me she gave it to him because of his relentless energy, and because he was born in the spring.” the way he keeps slipping in and out of referring to Blue as his former ward doesn’t pass him by. “When I realised that you were the one behind Bluebird, it reminded me of that.”

Blue’s skin prickles with what he’s implying. He feels that phantom sensation of chalk on his hands again, grainy and invasive. He can even smell it in his nose.

Now, more than ever, he wants to shrink back into comforting shadows that don’t exist in his cell.

“You’re reaching.” he tells Wayne, narrowing his eyes.

The man doesn’t look put off by his response. “Perhaps. But you still haven’t answered my question; why Bluebird?”

Blue barely restrains the frustrated growl that wants to emerge out of his throat, turning it into a sneer instead. “Let me go, then maybe I’ll tell you.”

“Blue—”

“It’s not your business, Batman.” Blue replies coldly, “I don’t owe you anything; answers or otherwise. Not ever, and certainly not while you’re holding me prisoner. Come back when you’re willing to discuss releasing me. Until then, I don’t want to speak to you.”

Rising from the bed, Blue stalks as far away from Batman as the cell will allow him to, before sinking down onto the floor with his back turned towards him. The metal wall is cool when he lays his temple against it, a soothing contrast to the angry seething in his mind.

For a good minute, there’s silence.

Then, finally, Wayne speaks again. “You may not believe me yet, but I am trying to help you. No matter what was done to you, you’re still a good man inside, and you don’t have to carry on down this road you’ve begun. Not you,” he pauses, “... and not Jason either.”

Blue’s heart clenches in his chest when Batman says Jason’s name. He almost, _almost,_ breaks his word because of it, hungry to know what’s become of his partner, but at the last second stubbornly holds onto it. He doesn’t need to ask, he’s sure they’ll talk to him about Jason of their own accord soon enough.

“Eat something.” Wayne says when he realises this. Blue hears him stand up from the chair. “We’ll talk again later.” 

Keeping his face turned to the wall, Blue doesn’t turn to watch him go.

*

“So...” Blue’s next visitor says to him, some hours after Batman left. “This is… uh, awkward, huh?”

In the center of the cell, Blue doesn’t drop out of his handstand, but keeps his toes pointed up to the ceiling as he first lifts one hand from the floor, then presses it in against the small of his back. With nothing else to do down here, he’s fallen to exercise to help deal with the overpowering boredom he feels, and to distract from that which he’d rather not think about.

Despite the last words Batman imparted to him, he still has yet to eat anything, though now he is starting to get noticeably hungry. Maybe it’s a gesture born only out of stubborn resentment, but really, Blue doubts he would keep it down if he did.

“Awkward,” he repeats, flipping forwards onto his feet so he can face Roy Harper, eye to eye, “Is not the word I’d choose.”

The man lifts an eyebrow. He’s out of uniform, the same as Blue’s last two visitors, dressed in plain jeans and a red shirt that clashes violently with the orange shade of his hair. “Do I want to know the word you’d use?”

Blue bares his teeth at him. “No.”

Harper winces. “Cold, but fair.”

After another minute of silent staring from Blue, he sighs, then scratches the back of his head. “Look, considering the circumstances and all, I guess I should probably start by introducing myself to you properly. Again, that is. My name’s Roy Harper, Arsenal. But I went by Speedy, back when we were friends.”

He sticks out his hand towards the cell, then realises what he’s doing and pulls it back with a muttered curse.

Under other circumstances, Blue might have been amused by that, but right now? He’s simply too angry to feel anything else.

“If I tell you my name, will you use it?”

“I’ll call you whatever you want if it means you’ll talk to me, Blue.” Harper’s lips curve up in a small smile, “Don’t worry, you’ve made your point _very_ clear on that front.”

Right. The cameras. They all would have seen and heard his conversation with Batman.

Blue mirrors his position, folding his arms across his chest. “What do you want?”

“A lot of things, most of which I’m guessing you probably don’t want to hear. But top of that list... I guess to understand. Four days ago I thought you were dead. Now I find out you’ve been alive the whole time. You lost your memory, got turned into a super-powered assassin by some really creepy sounding motherfuckers, and… shit, I still haven’t wrapped my head around it. Even when you’re standing right here in front of me. I went...” He shakes his head. “I went to your funeral, man.”

Blue clenches his teeth together. “I’m not the person you think I am.”

“Yeah, I can see that.” Harper admits, which is refreshing, except then he also goes on to say, “But I also don’t think you’re right when you say there’s nothing of him left in you.”

Blue considers denying him, ignoring him. He’s been in here for what he thinks is just over a day, and he’s already tired of hearing that. But he also suspects it doesn’t actually matter what he does in this moment, Harper is going to continue talking to him anyway. “And why is that?”

“Well, for one thing, I’m not dead. I’ve heard a lot about Talons and the Court of Owls since we first met in Bludhaven. What they made you capable of. And when you pulled me back from Redwing in our fight, you could’ve easily killed me. But you didn’t.”

Blue feels a smile tug at his lips, sharp, and cruel. “You’re not dead because Jason said you’re a good man. We don’t kill heroes.”

Surprise ripples across Harper’s face for a moment. He definitely wasn’t expecting that, but recovers quickly. “Is that the only reason?”

“You attacked us. You helped Batman capture me. Took me away from my home and my partner.” Blue steps up to the glass, scratching his nail across it in line with Harper’s throat. He drops his voice lower, letting anger bleed out, “If I could, I’d tear your eyeballs out of their sockets right now.”

It belatedly occurs to him that maybe he should be doing the opposite of this. That maybe, he should be playing up an act as Dick Grayson, and gaining enough trust that they’ll let him out of his cell. But he’s too furious to think that far ahead just yet, and the pleasure of watching Harper recoil back from the glass, eyes widening as if for the first time he’s seeing what he’s actually dealing with, is more than satisfying. 

Recovering quickly, Harper grits his teeth. “You’re trying to scare me off, it won’t work.”

Blue snorts as he drops his hand away from the door, then turns away from it. “I think it already has.”

“Your apartment,” the words cause him to stop mid-step, “I’ve been in it.”

“So what?” Blue asks, irritated by the reveal of knowledge he’d suspected from the moment they attacked him, but now has confirmed.

That apartment is his and Jason’s home. No one else has any right to be there, and he’s afraid suddenly, of what they might have done to it. Their things. All the possessions carefully gathered over the last year to call his own, after years of having nothing but his weapons and the clothes on his back. There’s no way Jason would have been able to go back there after making his escape to save them.

They’re probably watching the place even now, Blue thinks, to see if he does.

“A few things. First, that shit brand of coffee you got on the side? Did you know that was Dick’s favourite? He drank it more than any other guy I ever knew. And don’t try to tell me it belongs to that Todd kid, either. I checked with the butler, apparently, he’s way more of a tea drinker than you ever were. Second, all those action movies you have on the shelf by the TV? You know, several of them were Dick’s favourites too. He loved that B-movie crap. Shit, I even remember going to the theatre to watch some of them with you when we were kids.” 

Blue doesn’t move, which is his mistake, because Harper takes that as a cue to carry on, and the more he talks, the more painfully earnest voice his voice becomes. “Anyone ever tell you blue was his favourite colour? Probably not right? It doesn’t seem like something that Todd would know, considering he didn’t come to live here until after you were gone and Bat’s isn’t that much of a talker. But you and Dick have that in common. A terrible taste in fashion too.”

Blue’s chest feels tight, his mouth dry. He wants to tell Harper he never really wore any of the clothing that’s in his closet. That most of the time, he made Jason buy him those shirts just to drive him crazy, and that at home he’d wear Jason’s clothes instead, which were more comfortable, and smelled nicer too once he’d already worn them.

But he doesn’t. Because that’s private, just the same as his reasons for choosing his name. Because this man doesn’t — _shouldn’t_ , know anything about him.

“You’re going to tell me I’m wrong, but when I walked into that apartment I know I saw pieces of Dick Grayson in it. And maybe you really don’t remember being him, but I think he’s still a part of you. Buried somewhere deep down.” Harper’s voice sounds almost like it’s going to crack for a moment.

Blue can feel the world starting to tilt underneath him. “I…”

“Why don’t you want to remember, man?” Harper demands of him, Barbara Gordon’s question echoed in his mouth, and so much more forthright about why he’s here than Batman was. “Weren’t you completely fucking furious the moment you found out what they took from you? Didn’t you want to get it back?”

Blue doesn’t say anything.

“C’mon, what are you afraid of?”

His spine goes rigid. “I’m not afraid. I already know who I am.”

“Yeah?” Harper says thickly, “Then prove it.”

Blue hears him step closer.

“Look, I called in a few favours with some friends. Our friends. Bats and Oracle convinced me not to tell them about you, though. Not yet, so I lied, told ‘em I was making a scrapbook for my daughter instead. Been a few years, but must’ve meant something big to them, because they all came through pretty quick.” Blue hears the telltale slide of the draw his meals come into the cell through opening. “Those are all photos of you in there, the person you were, and our friends. You should take a look at them.”

“I’ve seen photos.”

“Wh… you have?” Harper sounds surprised. “Which ones?”

“The papers—”

That surprise soon turns to scorn. Harper shakes his head. “Newspapers. What are they going to tell you? That you knew how to pose and smile and wave? That wasn’t you, Blue. _These_ are you. My best friend. The guy I had to hold up over a toilet the first time he got drunk and yakked on Wonder Girl’s boots while begging me not to tell Batman. The guy who used to kick my ass across the training mat, and listen to me complain about Ollie for hours on end when I needed it. The guy that saved my life more times than I can count.”

Blue’s hands tighten into fists as he whirls back around to face the glass, openly glaring at Harper now. “I’m not him! When will any of you learn to listen to me when I say that?”

“When you make me believe it!” Harper retorts, just as close to the other side of the glass. Anger and frustration are in his eyes, grief and need accompanying a hope so blinding it’s almost painful to look at. More quietly, he says, “When you answer the question and tell us why you don’t want to remember. _C’mon_ , man. Just talk to me.”

Blue tightens his hands still further, nails cutting crescent moons into his palms. For once, he takes a leaf out of Jason’s book. “Fuck you.”

Harper grits his teeth, and for a moment looks like he’s about to argue further, but then he bites down on his lip instead. One deep breath follows another, as Harper visibly calms himself down before pulling his hand back through his hair and tucking the long strands in behind his ear. 

“Take a look at the photos, think about it. That’s all I’m asking you to do. Please.”

It’s the ‘please’ that catches him. Changes his next cutting remark into something different as he casts a look at the folder. “You said we were friends.” Blue lowers his tone, thinking again of the idea that tiptoed its way into his mind earlier. “Would you keep your friend locked up like this if he were here?”

“He is here.” Harper replies, “I think that answers your question.”

“Would he have done this to you?”

Blue expects the question to give Harper pause. It doesn’t. “If he thought it was the right thing to do, absolutely.”

Blue says nothing to that, and after thirty seconds of watching him, Harper sighs.

“Look, I didn’t… I meant to ask, before I got carried away there, is there anything you want? From your place or...” His eyes flick to the uneaten food. “Anything we can give you that’ll make you feel more comfortable down here?”

“Besides letting me go?” He asks tiredly.

Harper gives him a sad smile in return, “Besides that.”

Blue considers the question for a moment. “It’s cold. Make it warmer.” and with that, turns round and crawls back in amongst the blankets under the bed.

*

He waits until twenty minutes after Harper has left to get up again, making his way to the shower at the end of the cell, which is the only other place he can be certain he isn’t being watched, and drawing the privacy screen shut around it and the toilet.

The water heats up quickly after Blue turns it on, which is maybe the only good thing he can say about this place. He doesn’t even bother to strip out of his clothing before climbing in under the spray and sinking down onto his haunches.

The conversation has shaken him, worse than any other so far. He can feel Dick Grayson like a bad taste sitting in the back of his mouth, trying to claw his way out over his tongue no matter how hard Blue tries to swallow him down.

He thought he was new in every way. In the food he ate, in the things he drank; even in the films he watched. But if Roy Harper is right, that’s a lie. He’s not all new, not really. The original owner of this body is still here in some way more pervasive than the occasional unsettling dream or flash of memory: he’s in the most basic aspects of Blue’s day to day life.

It makes him want to scream for a moment, and maybe he would, if he didn’t suspect there were still microphones in here. It makes him want Jason to come and hold him, the way he always would, allowing Blue to bury himself in another’s skin until the moment is gone.

He wants, even for just a moment, to look in the eyes of someone who accepts him for what he is, rather than seeking anything different.

Eventually, an indeterminate amount of time later, he stands up and turns the water off. Stepping out of the shower in sopping wet clothes makes him feel more than a little foolish for his behaviour, and for a minute Blue amuses himself by imagining the fit Jason would have if he could see him now. Exclaiming about Blue catching a cold, even though it’s impossible for him to get ill like a normal human would.

Then he walks back into the main part of the cell, trailing water, and sees a new tray waiting for him on the shelf, with a plate of food and a dry set of clothes sat on top of the folder Harper left. There’s also what looks like a note. 

Blue approaches the door cautiously, before picking the piece of paper up and unfolding it.

_I do not know if you still like these, but I hope you will at least give this dish a chance unlike you did with the others. Whatever name you choose to use, you are clever enough to know that starving yourself will do you more harm than good in the long run. **Eat.** _

_I have missed you._

_-A_

_P.S I would appreciate it if you could place the other trays and plates back on the shelf when you are done with them. Unfortunately, I have yet to manifest the ability to walk through walls._

Blue doesn’t know why, but the note makes him want to laugh and cry all at the same time.

Then he pulls the cover off the dish and a smell straight out of his dreams fills his nostrils. Mushrooms, stuffed with crab.

Suddenly, his hunger returns full force, and Blue’s hand trembles as he lifts one to his mouth and takes the first bite.

It’s delicious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> >_>


	6. Chapter 6

“I’m sorry about yesterday.” Barbara says to him, the next time she visits. Sitting in her chair, as prim and proper as she appeared before. Her hair is loose today, and it curls down gently against her neck.

At her appearance, Blue can’t help but imagine all three of them waiting in a line: her, Batman and Arsenal. Three visitors moving back and around through a revolving door to speak to him. It’s an image that amuses Blue, as much as anything can right now. “For what?”

“You were upset.”

He snorts, turning his head away from her. Upset. Of course he was upset. And not just because of what was said to him.

“Roy shouldn’t have thrown so much at you at once. This is still new to him. You, the way you are. He’s still coming to terms with to it. That’s not an excuse mind you, and I’ve discussed that with him, but it’s the truth.”

“What’s Batman’s excuse?”

Barbara smiles a little, the corner of her mouth just barely rising up. “He loves you.”

Blue is even less impressed by that. He leans his head back against the bed, looking up at the bare ceiling with his arms wrapped around his pulled up knees. He’d made the decision not to let them put him on edge anymore after yesterday, and that includes hiding from the cameras. “You don’t imprison people you love.”

“Sometimes we make hard choices.”

“Is that what you’ve done?”

“Yes.” she replies honestly. Then, “Have you thought anymore on my question?”

He doesn’t reply to her, and after a moment Barbara nods acceptingly. “All right. Let’s talk about something else instead for now. Can I ask you about what you said to Roy yesterday?”

Blue cocks his head in silent question towards her. He’d said a number of things to Harper, she’ll have to be more specific if she wants an answer.

“About the photographs. You.told him you had looked at photographs of yourself from before, in the newspapers.”

Oh. He digs his fingernails into the flesh of his calves, bitterly regretting ever letting the words pass his lips. “It was a long time ago.”

“When?”

Blue bites the inside of his cheek again. “Why does it matter?”

“It matters in helping me understand you. The choices you’ve made, and why you believe what you do.” Barbara taps her fingers against the screen of her tablet. The same one she brought with her yesterday. “It matters in you getting out of here.”

Blue tastes blood on his tongue. “After Batman destroyed the Court.”

“Did you go looking for them, or did you find them by accident?”

His eyes stay pointedly fixed on the ceiling. “I looked.”

There’s a brief pause. Blue expects her to ask why he decided to look, but instead she skips right over that question to the next one. “And what did you find?”

“A boy who looked like me. That’s all.”

“You didn’t feel anything when you looked at those photos? No memory or emotion? No urge to learn more?”

He turns his head to look at her this time, making sure their gazes are connected when he firmly tells her the truth, “No. None.”

“What about with Bruce?” She elaborates without him having to press her this time. “Every time you’ve met him since the Court fell, you’ve ran.”

Blue snorts softly, “After what happened to the other Talons, why wouldn’t I run?”

Sleeping, frozen forever in their icy tombs. Those that had survived the war, that is. Batman’s one rule was apparently a little looser when applied to the undead, and while Blue may still breathe and have a living heartbeat unlike the others, he hadn’t been willing to face the chance that he too could be placed into cryogenic slumber back then.

Not when he had the chance to be his own master. Not when he’d had work to do.

“Bruce wants to help you, not harm you.”

“No, he wants to turn me back into the boy you all knew. There’s a difference.”

Blue expects Barbara to argue with him on that, but she doesn’t. She just looks momentarily saddened. “Is that the only reason?”

“The only reason for what?”

“Why you ran.”

He doesn’t like this playing coy. He also doesn’t like how astutely she seems to see into him, poking and prying at that which he’d rather keep hidden. Silent. _Buried_. Blue doesn’t answer, holding himself perfectly still as he examines the configuration of the bolts holding together the wall on the other side of the cell. A distraction from the conflicting feelings inside of him.

“You know staying silent really doesn’t help your case.” Barbara says wryly, after a few moments.

Blue clenches his teeth together. “Maybe you should just say what you really mean, instead of dancing around it.”

“Touche.” She takes off her glasses, wiping them carefully with the bottom of her shirt before perching them back on her nose again. “Do you remember when you killed the Joker?”

Remember? Of course he remembers. He can never forget. A single knife to the chest, it had been one of the easiest (and most pleasing) kills he’d ever made, except for the fallout that followed afterwards. Jason had been furious, even if he had eventually understood and been grateful that the monster who murdered him was well and truly gone regardless of who did the deed.

“Yes.” he replies cautiously, wary of where this might be headed.

“I watched the cowl recording of what happened. You said something, near the end, that made me curious.” There’s a stiffness to Barbara as she talks about it. Specifically when she mentioned the Joker’s name. Blue wonders why. Then she lifts up the tablet she brought with her and presses something on the screen. A moment later, Blue hears his own voice start to play. Distorted by the small tinny speaker built into the device, but his voice nonetheless.

_"You weren't going to do it, you never would. So I did it for you. Both of you."_

Blue goes still. Stops breathing for a moment even before Barbara begins to talk again.

“‘Both of you.’” She repeats quietly. “Why did you say that?”

Jason asked him the same question. It was almost a whole year ago now. There had been confusion in his voice, curiosity, but no judgement. Blue had found it hard to answer him then; he finds it harder to answer Barbara now. What he’d said at that time had been true, but the implications… what those holding him prisoner might use it to justify…

“Jason would have shot him if I didn’t kill the Joker.” He twists the words around his mouth, like threading the string in a tapestry. “He would have hated himself if he did.”

“But you said you did it for both of them. Not just for Jason.” Barbara says quietly. “Maybe you don’t feel anything for me or Roy or anyone else from your past anymore, but I’d bet my back teeth it’s not the same way for Bruce. It might not be a memory, or a feeling you really understand, but it is there. Am I right?”

If Blue could stick a knife in his past self right now, he probably would. He can feel that strangeness itching at the back of his brain. The feeling he hates, more pervasive since he was exposed to the Scarecrow’s fear toxin all those months ago. The knowledge that no matter what else he may think of Batman and Bruce Wayne, he does not want him dead, though at the moment he very much wants him harmed.

“I did it for Jason. To avenge him.” He says again, keeping his eyes firmly on the wall. “And to stop him from doing something he’d regret. That’s all.”

It’s quiet enough that he can hear the water dripping from the tap at the back of his cell. The faint rustle of a bat’s wing somewhere up above.

“You know, I could always tell when you were lying.” Barbara says finally. “Your tells haven’t changed that much. I really need you to be honest with me, Blue. More than anything, just be honest. It’s the only way I can help you.”

The quiet roll of wheels across stone announces her departure.

 

* * *

 

 “I told you not to come back here until you’re willing to discuss letting me go.”

“I want to talk to you about Jason.” Batman says, outright ignoring Blue’s attempt at dismissal this time, which comes the moment he’s revealed, standing in front of the cleared glass as stiff and heavy as a statue.

“He’s going to get me out of here.” is how Blue chooses to answer that statement, fingers toying with the edges of the folder Harper left him before tossing it across the floor, still unopened despite his boredom. “It’d be better for all of you if you just let me go now.”

“You believe he’s a danger to us?”

“Don’t you?”

Batman doesn’t rise to the bait. But there is something else in him Blue recognises, a tension to the shoulders that suggests discomfort, and with Barbara’s words still hanging in his ears he can’t help but wonder if his ability to read the man actually stems from more than just his Court training. If it’s another part of Grayson that remains burrowed beneath his skin. “When did you two first meet?”

Blue cocks his head at the question. “You should know, you were there.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

It feels good to poke at him. To try and find the chinks in Batman’s armour. Blue wants to make him lose his cool. Wants to make him angry. Wants to make him forget himself, even for a moment. Then maybe he’ll make a mistake. One Blue can use to his advantage to get out of here and find Jason before it’s too late.

He stretches his legs across the floor before rising. Surprisingly, his request for the cell to be made warmer has been followed. Cold no longer strikes the soles of his bare feet when he walks. A small island of relief amid a larger ocean of troubles.

Blue runs his finger down the join of the glass where it meets the steel wall as he thinks about his answer, choosing the words he knows will cut deepest. “The year before you let him die.”

They work. Wayne flinches. Minutely, but it’s there. It’s telling that he doesn’t choose to deny it. “How did it happen?”

Again, Blue mulls over answering. By itself, telling Batman how he and Jason met doesn’t sound particularly harmful, it’s what motive he might have for asking that Blue has to be careful of. If it’s a genuine desire to know, or a trick designed to trip him up into revealing something that can be used against him.

“Why do you care?”

“Because I want to understand you. The two of you,” Wayne hesitates, jaw locked a moment. “Your relationship.”

Something illicit runs through him at the word. “You don’t like it.”

“I don’t like that I don’t understand it. Where it comes from.”

“It’s none of your business.” Just like his name.

“You’re my children.”

Blue’s gaze sharpens, the hairs raising on the back of his neck. “That’s where you’re wrong. I never was.”

It might as well be true, for all that he knows he didn’t just spring out of the ground fully formed one day. Blue remembers nothing clear of his life before the Court. Flashes of images, colours and ghostly sensations don’t cut a true recollection. His first real, clear memory is of a knife being placed into his hand, an order to kill, and the hot spill of blood coating his fingers from an open throat. Obedience and violence were his welcome into the world, and over the years he’s left only one of those birthday creeds behind.

Stuck behind unbreakable glass, words are Blue’s only weapon to strike out with, and he’s surprised that Wayne doesn’t stagger back from the force of the wound these ones deliver. He certainly looks like he wants to, if the clenching of his fists is anything to go by.

Or maybe launch forward and attack, but that might just be wishful thinking on Blue’s part. Violence is one thing he knows how to deal with. Words are much harder.

“You’re trying to make me angry.” Wayne says.

“Am I?” Blue asks, with the same blandness he once did his Owl masters. But unlike then, now he uses that tone of voice with a deliberate aim to needle. Wayne sucks in a deep breath, striving to calm himself as he pushes back his hair from his forehead.

“I don’t want to fight with you, Di—Bluebird.”

“Then you shouldn’t have locked me in here!” Blue snarls, curling his lips back over his teeth. “I didn’t ask for this. All we wanted was to be left alone.”

“I’m trying to help you.”

“No, you’re trying to _fix_ me. But I don’t need fixing, I’m fine the way I am.”

“As the murderer the Court made you? As a man who had his memories, his life, stolen from him? Are you really happy with that?” Wayne asks him harshly, closer to his side of the glass than before. “Never knowing everything you lost?”

“I’m happy with Jason!” Blue snaps back at him, temper fraying. He slams his hand into the glass, but Bruce doesn’t flinch. “Nothing you say is going to change that.”

The next question catches him off guard, makes him rock back a little with how blunt it is. “What is he to you exactly?”

“What?”

“Jason. What is he to you?”

Blue considers the question, its purpose, a moment, then for once answers truthfully in the simplest way he can. “He’s mine.” he says, with everything those words mean to him behind them.

Someone who cares. Someone to come home to. Someone who accepts him for who he is and not who he was or could be. Good sex, slow lovemaking. A reliable presence at his back when a fight is on the cards. Late night conversations, laughter at bad movies and the gentle stroke of fingers through his hair while Jason reads aloud in the evenings before they go out. The smell of hot food when he wakes up in the morning, and the soft company of warm yellow light when he goes to sleep, strong arms wrapped around him.

Love, as much as he understands it.

Wayne sucks in a sharp breath. “Yours.” he repeats, as if the word means something different to him. “What does that mean?”

Blue narrows his eyes, trying to decide if he’s being deliberately obtuse or if he’s just in that much denial. Harper said they’d been in his and Jason’s apartment; they’d seen them on the roof together. He must know.

“Not your business.” He answers again, unwilling to give an inch.

Batman looks frustrated. Good, that makes two of them. “You’re making this more difficult than it has to be.”

“And why should I make it easy for you?” Blue says to him harshly, “You’re not my master, not my commander. I stopped following orders the day the court died; I owe you _nothing_.”

He grimaces. “I’m not… I’m not trying to order you. I’m not the Court, Bluebird. I destroyed them to save you. To bring you home.”

Blue thins his lips, fingers curling into fists against the glass. “They kept me in a cell too.”

It’s as if he physically struck him. Bruce goes rapidly pale, actually going so far as to take a step back. His lips part, but only silence comes out. Blue feels some measure of pride for managing to shut him up.

Yet, when Bruce turns around his heel and leaves, there is no lingering sense that he won something. Only a small, eating sensation of guilt.

When did he start to think of him as Bruce?

 

* * *

 

He looks at the photographs.

Blue doesn’t know how long it’s been since Batman left. Hours at the least. There’s no way to truly tell time in this unchanging place; no sun, no stars. He thinks night comes when he hears a great roar of wings spring to life and then fade away — the bat colony leaving the cave — but he can’t be sure. Food arrives, more dishes brought to him by the mysterious A. They all taste delicious, and remind him in some ways of the food Jason makes him at home. He wonders if this man is the one who taught Jason how to cook. It’s not a question Blue ever thought to ask him before, but now dearly wants to.

Missing Jason plays a big part in what motivates him to do it, as well as the ever present boredom. He needs something, anything, to distract him.

Blue takes the folder under the bed, curling into the nest of blankets he made there, and then — fingers shaking slightly with trepidation — opens it, spilling out the pictures from inside.

There are a lot of them. Largely printouts from a computer, but a few genuine polaroids are included as well. A host of faces look up at him from each one. Kids and teenagers mostly, but a few adults too. He doesn’t recognise a lot of them, but there is at least one face among the group he knows very well.

He plucks the top photo out of the pile, examining it and its subject. The boy’s features are rounder, softened by lingering baby fat. His eyes are the dark blue of the sky just before nightfall, rather than edged with gold. His skin, warm and lightly bronzed, without a visible pathwork of veins running beneath it. But it’s him, it’s Blue. His own face, distorted by youth and a glaze of everyday humanity. A bright, sunny smile of the variety he isn’t sure he even knows how to do curving his lips.

This is what they see when they look at him.

Sliding that photo aside, Blue picks up another one. It’s a group shot. Teenagers dressed in garishly bright colours with their arms looped around each other’s shoulders. Robin stands in the center, unmasked. Next to him a girl with her black hair pulled into a ponytail, a boy in yellow with a lightning bolt across his chest and what Blue recognises as a younger version of Harper all in red. Finally, there’s another boy in red and blue. His pallor makes him look a little ill next to the rest of them, and out of nowhere Blue gets a whiff of saltwater, sharp and uncomfortable up his nose.

He drops the photo to rub it and moves on.

More of the same group, growing older. Some in costume, others out. Outfits and hair change. The group shrinks, grows. Some photos feature all of them, others only part. Each one contains Grayson. Then things change. New people come into the pictures. A boy with green skin and hair, and curiously sometimes animals with the same tones. Another teenager who seems to be half-machine also appears, as well as a pale girl shrouded in a deep blue cloak. Alongside her stands another, beautiful, tall and golden skinned, with long hair red and curling. Her eyes are brilliant green with no iris or pupil to speak of, yet despite that alien appearance she still looks warm and kind.

His gaze lingers over her for a moment. In every photo she appears she’s stood next to Grayson. In some they have their arms wrapped around each other, and in one they’re even cuddling together in a chair. Blue stares at it, then abruptly remembers Harper’s words from before. The name Kori, the implication that she and he… that she and Grayson had been partners.

He’d said other names too, hadn’t he? Back on the rooftop of their apartment. Wonder Girl. Kid Flash. Aqualad. Blue’s eyes skirt back to the earlier photos, trying to connect code names to features. Stars match to Wonder Girl. The lightning bolt to Kid Flash. Aqualad Blue thinks is the pale boy in blue and red, not the green one or the robot.

He wonders what their names are, then recoils back from the curiosity.

There’s no need for him to know. He’s not the boy in the photo. These people aren’t his friends.

He drops them, shoves the entire folder away, then twists himself around in the blankets to face the nearby wall.

 

* * *

 

 “Where’s Barbara?”

“Good morning to you too.” Harper says, tucking his hair back behind his ear as he sits down in front of the cleared window. He doesn’t bother with a chair, just plants himself cross legged on the bare stone. “What’s the matter, you got something urgent you need to talk to her about?”

Blue glares at him, tired and cranky from a night of restless sleep and uneasy dreams. “No, I just like her better than the rest of you.”

Harper, strangely, chuckles, finding the comment amusing rather than offensive. “Figures, you always were a sucker for redheads. At least when it came to girls; boys you seem to have a brunette thing going on.”

Blue just stares at him, until finally Harper rolls his eyes and deigns to give a straight answer.

“She’s got some day stuff to take care of. Visiting her dad. She’ll be back this afternoon if you want to see her then.”

“I don’t.” Blue answers, wondering why he even asked.

“Uh huh.” Harper scratches the tip of his nose, looking at him thoughtfully for a moment. “How’s the heating working out for you?”

Blue transfers his gaze to his bare feet, toes resting easily against the steel floor. “It’s adequate.”

“Adequate.” Harper repeats. “All right, well. Good then. You want it higher, just let me know.” He plants his elbows on his thighs, then his chin on the palm of one hand as he watches Blue. It looks like he’s thinking something over, and Blue soon grows bored of waiting for him to reach whatever decision it is he’s trying to make.

“Spit it out.” he says.

“Spit what out?”

“Whatever you want to ask me.”

“What makes you think I want to ask you anything?”

Blue bares his teeth. “It’s all any of you have done since you brought me here.”

To his credit, Harper actually looks a little guilty. “Yeah, I know. Didn’t mean to get so intense on you before. You’re just… well, you. You know?” He sighs, “Look, after last time I thought maybe… maybe we could try having a conversation today, rather than an interrogation.”

What brought this on, Blue wonders. The talk Barbara said she had with him? Or maybe his own inspiration. “A conversation.” he repeats.

“Yeah. Like… you talk, I talk. If there’s anything you want to talk about. Or I could just talk. I’m good at that…” he trails off, “Uh, talking.”

Blue narrows his eyes, considering. He didn’t expect this. He thought Harper would be here to ask him about the folder, the pictures. But perhaps he’s had a change of heart… or perhaps he just saw how well Blue’s last conversation with Batman went.

“About what?” he asks cautiously, feeling him out.

“Anything. Everything.” Roy fidgets, dropping his hand so both rest together in his lap. “I’ve got some good stories I could tell, if you’d like to hear them.”

“About him?”

“Not all of them.”

Is this a trick? A trap? Blue hates that his paranoia runs so high, but he can’t help it. He can’t forget why he’s here in the first place. That no matter how otherwise bored or frustrated he might feel, this man is his enemy.

Yet…

Everything he’s done up until this point, every refusal and snarled insult, has done nothing to earn him what he craves most: the opportunity to escape. The longer he drags this out, the less time he has to stop Jason from attempting some foolhardy rescue, and the chances of them both ending up in a cell increase. He needs to consider another approach — other than satisfying the burning rage in his gut, that is — and the notion that first occurred to Blue during his initial talk with Roy chooses this moment to spring back to life.

Pretend. Gain their trust just enough that they’ll give him some form of opening to get out of here. He just needs one opportunity. Just _one_ moment of vulnerability and he could escape, he knows he could. They’ve taken his suit, his weapons, but they haven’t taken his mind or his will. Not yet. Those two things are the most important tools Blue owns. The only ones he needs. He can do this, even if the thought makes him feel a little sick inside.

Decision made, Blue looks back at Harper, shrugging carelessly. It’s important he not appear too eager to begin with. “Do what you want, it’s not like I can stop you.”

Even so, his begrudging words produce a positive reaction. Harper grins, and Blue has to acknowledge that Barbara was right in one thing: he’s more raw over Blue’s existence than the rest of them, which also makes him more vulnerable and open to attack. If anyone is going to be his path towards more lenient treatment from the group, it’s him.

Just so long as Blue’s careful about it.

“All right!” Harper leans back, clapping his hands together in front of him. The sound startlingly loud as it rebounds off the walls of the cavern around them. “Let’s get started then. Just er… just give me a minute to think here.”

Blue snorts, but says nothing. Pulling one of the blankets from his nest, he stretches out on the floor and makes himself comfortable, pillowing his head on his arms. He has low hopes for the entertainment value of Harper’s stories, but at least they’ll be better than the echoing silence that has been his most enduring companion throughout his imprisonment so far.

“Okay,” Harper eventually says, with far to much excitement, “Buckle in, Blue, I know you’ll like this one…”

The first story he tells has no mention of Robin, nor does the second. Blue closes his eyes as he listens, unwillingly drawn in a little by the tales of brightly costumed heroes and villains, plucky teens and international spies. Harper has a pleasant enough voice when he’s not using it to badger Blue about his past, as well as a clear knack for off the cuff storytelling. He mentioned he had a young daughter, didn’t he? Perhaps it’s a consequence of that.

When Harper first cautiously tells a tale that involves Robin, perhaps testing the waters, Blue doesn’t call him out on it. He just lets the words flow around him, like water off a duck’s back. He hears about an alien princess who fell from the sky, an ancient cult led by an immortal bent on world domination, and a nigh unstoppable assassin who could hold off half a dozen teen superheroes at once.

Blood. Orange on black.

“... Blue?”

Harper’s voice sounds muffled when he addresses him, as if it’s coming from a world away.

Blue blinks open his eyes. “What, Roy?” he says, then freezes at his slip.

On the other side of the door, Harper stares at him for a moment, but some measure of tact keeps him from calling Blue out on it. “Um, you okay?” he asks instead.

Blue curls his fingers into the blanket, wishing he had his claws. Wishing he could leap through the glass and wipe that genuine expression off Harper’s face. He doesn’t feel right suddenly. His skin itches and his tongue feels fat and heavy in his mouth. A traitorous slab of meat acting without the permission of his brain, feeding on remnants he doesn’t want to be there.

“I’ve had enough,” he says sharply. Too sharply he knows to be believable. “Leave me alone.”

Harper watches him a moment longer, teeth digging into his lip, then he nods. “Sure thing, Blue. I’ll see you again tomorrow, okay?”

 _Don’t bother_ , Blue almost snaps, before remembering his plan. His only chance to get out of here and reunite with Jason. He can’t give up on that, no matter what it may cost him. Not yet.

Not yet.

 

* * *

 

The dreams get worse. Flashes of colour and images without context, like those he had after being exposed to Scarecrow’s fear gas. He resents them. Resents the knowledge that when he closes his eyes they may be there waiting for him, uncomfortable in their vivacity. The worst are the images of cold, of water and ice.

Of drowning.

He tries not to sleep.

The next day passes slowly. Two times Batman comes to see him, and two times Blue refuses to say even a single word, ignoring his questions for almost an hour until eventually he gives up and leaves. On the other hand, he responds to Barbara’s queries as much as he dares, clinging to the desperation of his plan, and lets Harper prattle on as much as he wants with his _stories_ , but now remains as alert and on guard as he can during them, wary of what other ghosts they might raise if he’s not paying attention.

Jason occupies his thoughts most of all, of course. Blue constantly wonders where he is, what he’s doing. He worries at the time it’s taking him to get out of here, and the fact that Jason has seemingly not attempted to come for him yet, four days into his captivity. A late night moment of weakness has him sweating with the idea that maybe he’s _not_ coming. That maybe he’s decided Blue’s not worth the effort after all.

He bites down on it. On his arm until he tastes blood. Jason wouldn’t do that to him, _never_. But the fear of being left behind, of being abandoned… it’s been with him as long as he can remember, and he’s never really known why.

The wound Blue leaves on his arm heals within a minute. The doubt, though… that takes longer to go away.

They give him books to read but he ignores them. The food starts to lose its taste. He’s at odds listless and restless, going between climbing the walls and lying curled up in his nest. All he wants is to go home.

He’s talking to Barbara the next day when something changes, telling her in bits and pieces how he killed what was left of the Court of Owls after Batman was done with them. It’s a safe topic, nothing too risky for him, and part of Blue gets some mild enjoyment from watching her (and by proxy the rest of them) have to confront the reality of the blood on his hands. How he did it without a single ounce of regret.

Maybe that’s what spurs the question.

“What would he think of me?” he asks, during a quiet moment where she’s typing notes on her tablet, the words dropping out of his mouth like poisoned petals.

“Who?” Barbara replies, a little distracted. Blue waits until she finishes and looks up at him to continue.

He’s sitting back against one of the walls; temple pressed against the door’s glass, and his knees drawn up to his chest with his arms wrapped around them. “Your Grayson. The man you’re all so desperate to bring back, what would he think of someone like me?”

A frown covers her face. Giving Blue her full attention, Barbara moves the tablet to one side, tucking it in against her thigh before leaning forwards, elbows braced on her lap and with her chin resting against her laced together hands. “That’s an interesting question. Dick could be harsh in his judgement towards those who did wrong sometimes, but I think if he knew your story he would only feel sad for what was done to you.”

“Even though I kill people?”

“Even then. Though,” she smiles a little, “He would want you to stop. He could never condone killing.”

“Just like the rest of you.” Blue replies. “He would do the same thing to me you have.” Hadn’t Harper said almost exactly that when Blue had posed him a similar question about his actions?

“Perhaps. I can’t say for sure.” Barbara admits. “Dick was sixteen when… you were sixteen, when the Court took your memories. Still growing. Learning.”

“He wouldn’t like to be me.”

“You’re not separate people, Blue.” She says softly.

He snorts, looking away from her.

Then Barbara puts forward an idea that yanks his attention right back. “Does it worry you that if you got the memories of your old life back, you might hate yourself?”

Blue tenses. “There’s no chance of that.”

“But does it?” she asks, unrelenting. Pushing him as always to give her a straight answer.

Blue narrows his eyes, “If he’s everything you all say he was, wouldn’t he hate himself to know he’s responsible for all the things I’ve done?” Barbara hesitates, and that’s all the answer he needs. “I like who I am, and I’m happy with the life I have now. The only ones who have a problem with that are all of _you_.”

She recovers enough to say, “It’s mostly the killing part that’s the problem with how you live your life now.” Barbara takes off her glasses, pinching the bridge of her nose. She looks incredibly tired suddenly, naked stress visible on her face. Blue’s hands itch with the urge to reach out to her, reassure her it’s all right. The realisation tastes like bile in his throat.

Eventually, she speaks again. “Listen, I… despite what you might think, I can accept that you’re happy with this identity, I can. But there are some questions we need to answer first, and to let you go once we’ve answered them… you need to understand that we can’t do that if you don’t agree not to kill anymore.”

Despite himself, Blue sits up straight at what she’s saying. “What questions?”

She smiles briefly at him, evidently glad that he’s asking. “The Court took your memories, and we’ve never been able to figure exactly how they did it. Was it telepathy? Was it magic? Maybe some form of advanced technology; we just don’t know.”

“I don’t know either.” he replies, just in case that’s one of the questions.

“I didn’t think you would.” Barbara nods. “The questions we need to answer are… is what they did really permanent? And if it’s not, is your wish not to remember really your own or part of what they did to you? An assurance for them that you wouldn’t try to recover your past yourself if you ever encountered it.”

Blue blinks. He’d never considered that before. Never doubted that his decision to leave the past behind was his own, and why would he? He’s always been sure, been certain. The void he felt inside himself when he looked at Dick Grayson had been proof enough.

Hadn’t it?

“Bruce would like to bring in some people he knows to try and find out for sure,” Barbara continues, “But their methods can be intrusive, and I won’t let him take that step without getting your permission first.”

“I don’t want anyone in my head.” Blue recoils, pushing the idea away before he can consider it too far.

“I don’t think anyone ever does.” Barbara smiles slightly, but it’s entirely without humour. “It’s something for you to think about, that’s all. Otherwise the only way we can resolve this is with your honesty. I’m going to ask you again, Blue, are you absolutely sure there’s nothing you remember from before you were Talon? Not even the smallest flash of memory, good or bad?”

His lungs tighten, shrivelling in his chest. He doesn’t want to, but _cooperate_ his mind says, in conjunction with his heart. Give them something, win their trust. All he needs is an open door. Just one for him to get out of here. It might be his only chance to escape back home.

Back to Jason.

Digging his nails into his palms, Blue bites down on his pride and begins to talk.

 

* * *

 

 He vomits after Barbara leaves this time. Heaves over the toilet while his head spins.

He’s not used to it. He never gets sick normally, but can recognise well enough from his experience looking after Jason during his worst moments that in this case the cause is stress rather than anything viral.

When the whole uncomfortable process seems like it’s done, Blue slumps down, back braced against the sink and once again grateful for the privacy curtain across his cell. He doesn’t need to be witnessed like this; being seen as a prisoner is bad enough.

Telling Barbara about the brief glimpses of the past he had was draining, almost like he was selling his soul for the chance of escape. But now that it’s over, what lingers most is the doubt she’s put into his mind. The idea that even after all this time, the Court is still controlling him. That maybe he’s not as free as he thought he was.

Could it be true? Is it their handiwork that has him resisting those memories? Blue had never considered it before, neither had Jason. Now he can’t stop thinking about it, nor the idea that the only way to know for sure might be to let someone poke around inside his head. The very last thing he wants anyone to do.

“No,” Blue whispers to himself, “No, you know who you are. You _chose_ who you are.” Nothing they say can change that.

Standing up, he uses the soft plastic cup they gave him to get a drink of water and wash the terrible taste of sickness from his mouth. It helps him feel better, a little. Then Blue opens up the curtain to step back into the main area of his cell, only to come up immediately short at the sight of salvation staring him right back in the face.

Tim Drake has grown some in the year since Blue last laid eyes on him. Not much taller, but a little broader and with muscles more defined. He has a gloved hand placed against the glass, lips slightly parted as if he can’t get over his own shock at finding him here.

Unable to believe his luck, Blue stumbles forwards, lifting his hand to mirror the position of Tim’s on the door. _Finally_ , he thinks, able to at last believe he really has a chance at getting of here without Jason’s help. Finally, something has gone right. He can use this, take advantage of it. Tim owes him after what happened the first time they met. He’ll help him, Blue knows he will.

He just has to find a way to ask.

Leaning forward, Blue lets his hair fall forward to shield the smile on his face, and drops his voice down to a dark purr barely above a whisper.

“Hello, Robin.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Should I apologise again? I feel like I should apologise again.
> 
> Also, this is the last chapter entirely from Blue's perspective. Next time we shall be seeing what's been going on outside his cell.

**Author's Note:**

> [I'm on tumblr!](http://firefrightfic.tumblr.com/)


End file.
